Mikey Campbell
Citing a study by Flurry analytics, Business Week reports that despite taking a modest lead in worldwide smartphone marketshare, the Android operating system's app selection is being outnumbered by offerings designed for iOS, and the gap is only widening.
The Flurry study, which tracks app developers using the firm's tools, discovered that Google's push to match or outperform Apple's App Store is slowing down, possibly due to the difficulty developers face in programming for the fragmented Android mobile OS.
“We saw a greater migration to iOS,†says Flurry Vice President of Marketing Peter Farago.
As of January, iOS held a total of more than 550,000 apps in its arsenal, while Android's blitz to the top has introduced over 400,000 since the platform's launch in 2008.
More than 65,000 new projects were started by the over 55,000 developers tracked by the 2011 study, and the growth of new apps for iOS during the year roughly doubled efforts from Android app makers.
The trend away from Android could be industry-wide, as a 2,000-person survey conducted by Appcelerator and IDC showed that in November fewer developers were "very interested" in writing code for handsets running Google's OS than in June. Interest in iOS remained constant during the same period.
The number of new apps hitting the Android Market slowed down in 2011. | Source: Google
According to the app coders, the fragmentation of Android's ecosystem is to blame for the lackluster interest. Some note that Apple's iTunes system allows for a comparatively streamlined process that can quickly move an idea to a finished product, thus allowing companies to generate revenue with less overhead.
For example GameHouse, makers of the games 'Doodle Jump' and 'NCIS the Game,' claims that it makes three or four times the revenue on an iOS game when compared to its Android counterpart. This is in part due to the Google OS version taking two months more to complete because of the various optimizations needed to accommodate the litany of Android handsets available as well as constantly-changing OS versions.
Apart from platform fragmentation, the Android Market has multiple app stores whereas Apple relies on iTunes, which stores users' credit card data to make purchasing a simple and fast experience.
“Developers can make more money on iOS,†Farago says.
Apple's App Store within iTunes offers a seamless purchasing solution. | Source: iTunes
The mobile app industry sees iOS as the reigning champion of app distribution, however the sheer number of Android devices in the market make a compelling argument for the platform.
If and when Google can consolidate its partner handset makers and create a unified store that is as simple and monetarily integrated as iTunes, Android may well be the new industry leader.
Malcolm Owen
Amber Neely
Andrew O'Hara
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Andrew Orr
82 Comments
Lol. App gap. Got a rhyme theme going there.
I had a customer smash his Galaxy SII phone in front of me this week.
It had, for the 4th time, failed to load email through the Exchange Activesync account. To add insult to injury it would pop up that he had new mail and display the new message count but would show the inbox as empty.
We made sure it was on the latest firmware and the only way to fix it was to delete the account and set it up from scratch no amount of resets fixed the issue. We had also seen this issue on a couple of HTC Sensations.
He went ballistic and launched it across the room into a brick wall. It was quite an impressive sight to be honest, the screen literally exploded.
He now has an iPhone 4S, which to his glee, we setup by pushing the settings to it remotely. It's quite funny as he has now downloaded dozens of apps compared to the 3 or 4 he had on the Galaxy. He was going to suggest he download 'breathing' to chill him out a bit but feared I would have to pull an iPhone out of my skull.
with developers leaning toward iOS as partly because of Android's platform fragmentation.
The fragging of android is both on the user space and developers side. How much percentage of iPhones are running current OS compared to Android side of the equation. It seems that on the iOS side the devs can write for the state of the art while on the droid side its for the past. HTC is sometime in the future go to ics, like when???? Some hw will never be capable to run ics. Consistency in platform must be driving droid devs crazy. So many hoops (OEMs) and then hurdles (providers) it seems like a knock down drag out compared to the iOS publishing. I could be wrong, but I don't think so.....????
Lol that will never happen not as long as google has there version and oems have there version and phone companies have there version. Android is a total fragmented mess and unless something drastic happens it will always be that way.
And by the time they do go to ics it will be old and outdate and they will still be putting old oses on there phones, and still oems will be creating there own front ends and phone companies will be putting there garbage on the phones as well. Android has way too many fingers in the pie.