iOS Tops Android For Number of New App Projects From Developers 122
Analytics firm Flurry recently posted a report comparing the new projects being undertaken by developers for mobile apps on Android and iOS. According to their data, significantly more projects are started for iOS than for Android. The gap has been slowly shrinking over the past few quarters, but it's still bigger than it was a year ago. "For every 10 apps that developers build, roughly 7 are for iOS. While Google made some gains in Q1 2012, edging up to over 30% for the first time in a year, we believe this is largely due to seasonality, as Apple traditionally experiences a spike in developer support leading up to the holiday season." The iPad's dominance of the tablet market is one of several reasons for the gap. "In Flurry’s estimation, the fragmentation of the Android platform is increasing the cost and complexity of app development, perhaps curbing third-party investment in software."
What? (Score:4, Interesting)
How does a gap shrink and get bigger at the same time?
Doesn't mesh with distimo (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't make sense that Apple's been leading in starts all this time and Google's leading in new entries in the store.
Re:??? This makes no sense... (Score:4, Interesting)
I work for a mobile apps company. We *always* develop for iOS first, and if it's successful we'll port to Android. Android is pretty predictably 30% of the iOS revenue, so we gauge whether it's worthwhile. One of the other interesting things is that Apple forces app developers to do things which improves sales. For example, Apple sees that releasing a free app and then providing an in-app purchase for the full version increases revenue on average.. so they have forced us to convert several of our older apps (developed before in-app purchases) into the free-pay model and strongly encourage container apps when content is even remotely similar. Android doesn't force these types of things on you which is better imho but results in lower sales. It should be noted that our experience with sales is not universal, I believe the Angry Birds guys revealed that they get more revenue from Android than iOS.