Why Android is a Better Platform for Startups than iOS

https://medium.com/@pents90/the-story-of-appchat-and-why-android-is-a-better-platform-for-startups-than-ios-6d0847427fb1

by matt2000 • 11 years ago

79 43 11 years ago

medium.com

doseofreality• 11 years ago

So, you should be "Android first" with an app that could never be written on iOS? Yes, I'd say that makes sense.

Mithaldu• 11 years ago

Regardless of whether it would've been an option for this app, the same rules of reality apply to any other app: On Android reacting to user feedback can be done extremely quickly.

This is probably just their first android project and they had this realization and are eager to share it.

egwynn5• 11 years ago

But what if you want to make money by selling your app to people? Is the idea to test/iterate your app quickly on Android before bringing the finished product to iOS for revenue? Most sources I find online show a big discrepancy between expected app revenue from the iOS and Android worlds, so developing a for-profit app on Android first seems a little iffy to me.

EDIT: Hi downvoter[s]. Is it taboo for me to bring up the aforementioned revenue discrepancy? As far as I know it’s real, and should be a consideration for anyone who’s trying to follow the money. I’d appreciate insights and discussion instead of anonymous downvoting.

notsony• 11 years ago

10 years ago we were told not to write software for the huge Windows market because Mac owners buy software unlike those cheap PC users.

10 years later we keep getting told not to write software for the huge Android market because iPhone owners buy apps unlike those cheap Android users.

egwynn5• 11 years ago

According to some, the Google Play store is now grossing more money than Apple’s App Store. But on a per-downloader basis, it looks like the average iOS user is way more likely to spend money on any particular app than an Android user. So if you’re after users who spend money, it seems like a no brainer.

But I have no idea if this same dynamic applied to the PC/Mac days.

mwcampbell• 11 years ago

Did anyone ever credibly suggest that developers should ignore the huge Windows market? About 12 years ago, Joel Spolsky was saying quite the opposite, that Windows was the only platform that mattered, given the failure of write once, run anywhere.

chimeracoder2• 11 years ago

Most sources I find online show a big discrepancy between expected app revenue from the iOS and Android worlds, so developing a for-profit app on Android first seems a little iffy to me.

This is somewhat self-fulfilling. There are very few developers of paid apps that put equal time and effort into developing both on iOS and Android and release paid apps on both platforms (instead of freemium on one)[0].

Of those that do, many simply make one or the other (usually the Android one) either a simple web view shim, or a naive port of the app design from the opposite platform, which usually looks as bad as you'd expect it would.

So in the end, it's not surprising that some companies report dramatically better sales on iOS than on Android. It's not very straightforward to compare them, because they're essentially shipping two different products, one on each platform.

[0] I'm only talking about paid apps for which app revenue (including in-app purchases) is the primary business model. In other words, Facebook and Twitter would not count here, since they make their money off of advertising.

egwynn5• 11 years ago

Now this I can agree with. It's basically impossible to truly compare the two platforms' all-around profitability. The 'right' answer for any particular enterprise is to do proper research and decide whether Android or iOS is a better market-fit for their product. All the same, it's hard to escape the reputations each platform has, and it's usually not sensible for an individual business to go against the grain just to level the playing field.

mattmaroon2• 11 years ago

That's been our experience. The move fast and break things approach works well on Android, and is disastrous on iOS. When updates are only possible every 2 weeks at best, it's more like move slowly and don't break anything or your ratings will tank.

lyinsteve• 11 years ago

The move fast and break things approach

Sounds like something I want no part in.

jph• 11 years ago

We use the new Apple TestFlight, which enables iOS testing with 1000 users, and fast iterations.

For public apps, Apple offers expedited review for public bug fixes, and in my experience these are very fast, within 24 hours.

applecore• 11 years ago

Coming from the web, where we often ship hundreds of builds and variations for a production app in a single hour, “within a day” seems a little quaint.

fleitz5• 11 years ago

You ship builds every 18 seconds? I find this hard to believe...

200 builds / 60 minutes = 1 build every 18 seconds.

mikhailt• 11 years ago

TestFlight improved this a lot last year and even more so this year with the bump to 6 external builds per day support and 2000 testers.

Note that only the initial major version will be reviewed on TestFlight but once that gets approved shortly, minor builds can be pushed without the reviews 6 times a day. It worked really well for us. Once we're happy with the build, it's one smooth process to push it to the app store.

nostrademons• 11 years ago

It still wouldn't have worked in the situation the article described, because their initial guess of who their users were was wrong. They posted on a forum, nobody liked it, but one of their users posted on another forum and it took off. TestFlight requires that you specify who the testers are, right?

A lot of the reason the web took off was exactly this kind of serendipity; a dev found an idea to be mildly interesting, posted a rudimentary v1, it's not useful for what the dev thinks it will be, but users (usually not the users the dev anticipated) find it useful for something else.

crazychrome• 11 years ago

I totally agree with the article except one thing: it's much much more a pleasant experience to code iOS app than Android, even without considering the fragmentation problem.

spotman• 11 years ago

+1.

I love that the android store does not make you wait.

Having said that, I hate Android Studio, and Eclipse, and I hate the android simulator too.

It makes the development process slower, feels clunky.

To each their own, of course.

fleitz5• 11 years ago

Yup, most importantly android users just expect less, they really won't care if your app is slow, buggy, has poor UI, etc, it fits in with the rest of the platform.

Oletros2• 11 years ago

Try harder, too obvious and people won't react

fleitz5• 11 years ago

I wasn't really trolling... there are some great apps out there, but even those feel very broken, it's something about how the app scrolls and i think in combination with the screen feels on your fingers, it's like a steampunk phone, you know there's gears inside that might need oiling more regularly.

It's kinda like those make your own pasta places, you eventually realize that a chef is pretty good at figuring out what ingredients go together, sourcing high quality ingredients, etc. If you have a basic knowledge of food you can make pretty darn good pasta at a make your own pasta shop but will get blown out of the water by an italian grandmother.

You don't want to open your new pasta shop in an area with lots of grandmothers, if you aren't yet at the top of your game.

SandB0x• 11 years ago

Hmm, I would not want to miss out on iOS users if I were testing an app. I'd have thought the App Store approval issues would lead to more people pushing mobile web apps. Plus, nothing updates as quickly as a web-app. Are people doing this?

The last time I tried to write any kind of app was 2 years ago, and at the time people were telling me that better mobile web apps and cross-platform tools like Phonegap were the future. Has this changed or is it still around the corner?

davnicwil• 11 years ago

I think it's eventually been acknowledged that the phonegap approach only really works for a certain subset of apps - those where information display is the primary goal, and UX and interaction aren't more important than fast development and just getting your app on as many devices as possible.

However if you're really aiming for the smoothest UX, there's still just a bit too much delay and kludginess with HTML5 controls in the browser/webview, and nothing will beat native application controls. I think that difference is pretty small now, for the vast majority of apps and what they need to do, but it definitely still exists.

Recent cross-platform frameworks like React native certainly seem to buy into the 'native is king' mindset by focusing on allowing you to write as much cross-platform shared code as possible, in a single language/framework, but accepting that you must, with some abstractions, write the final UI layer with the target device/platform in mind. I.e. more learn once, write for every platform, run on every platform than learn once, write once, run everywhere, which seems just as much a pipe dream on mobile devices as it ever was!

tdkl• 11 years ago

Why is being able to release a half-assed app which needs "x iterations daily" to the public suddenly something to brag about ? That's precisely why I respect App Store content more then on the Play Store, I expect app releases to be serious and not taking the users as beta testers.

philtar• 11 years ago

I, on the other hand, like to be on the cutting edge.

PauloManrique• 11 years ago

My 2 cents, considering Brazil, one of the biggest markets on the planet:

An iPhone here costs A LOT, and I mean A LOT of money. The iPhone 6 costs US$ 1129 and the iPhone 6 Plus costs US$ 1258.

Our minimum wage, in comparison, is US$ 254/Month. The average montly income on the country last year was around US$ 376.

Just those figures already show how is nearly impossible for most of us to have iPhones. Add to that our crime rate, and most of us that can afford one, won't dare to do it in risk of losing it.

It's sad that we see a lot of nice apps, some good ideas and we can't even test it. I believe it's the same for several countries around the world.

That said, if you really want your app to reach a global audience, support for Android is a no brainer. I find the "Android users buy less" excuse not really acceptable, because the marrket is much bigger.

And I don't see that scenario changing in Apple's direction, because Windows Phone is growing a lot on developing countries, and it's the second operating system is almost every south american country. In Colombia, Windows Phone already have 25% of the market share. In Brazil, 6%, while iOS have 4,7%.

swah• 11 years ago

I never realized that Android has almost 90% market share here in Brazil. I wonder how many of those are low-end devices that don't just run the same apps that a quadcore, 2gb ram device runs.

Why Android is a Better Platform for Startups than iOS

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