2011 has been heralded in some quarters as the year of Android, as it saw the Google backed mobile operating system overtake Apple’s market share for smartphones, and celebrate ten billion Android apps downloaded. However, despite projections that there will be more Android apps downloaded in 2012 than iPhone apps, developers still prefer to develop applications for iPhone. Why is this?
One reason iPhone apps are preferred to Android apps is their ease of development. Android apps are made available for a vast variety of hardware which has different screen sizes, buttons and interaction with the touch screen. Apple doesn’t, with only one version of the iPhone being released each year, and especially with the hardware of the iPhone 4 and 4S being essentially the same. This means Android apps can often be buggy as they cannot be optimised for one piece of hardware.
Android apps are projected to overtake iPhone apps next year, but the total number of downloads has not yet surpassed iPhones total. Most developers have previously been iOS developers and have not been convinced to switch to Android apps yet. Developing Android apps requires different code to iPhone apps and switching will cost time and effort.
However the main reason is profit. While more smartphone owners now have Android phones, many paid less for them than an iPhone would cost, and many are not prepared to pay for Android apps. iPhone users are considered richer, iPhones are not cheap, and they are more likely to spend on apps. One company’s figures show that for every $1 generated for an iPhone app, only $0.24 dollars will be generated for Android apps. Android may have proved itself to certainly be a worthwhile platform to be on, however for developers with greater time restraints and less resources who can only choose one system to develop for, it may continue to be iPhone apps instead of Android apps that they choose for a while yet.
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