Apple gets more new apps than Android, widens app gap - Page 2

Didn't Eric Schmidt say awhile ago that Android developers would ssurpass iOS in six months?

Fragmentation is real, despite the fandroids saying otherwise. They will say things like "you can target all versions of Android in your build so your App will run on anything". That's only partially true. As I've stated countless times (and still it fails to sink in for some people), if you write a very basic App using the lowest common denominator of the Android feature set, then yes - it will run on anything.

But who wants to write simple Apps that can't take advantage of the latest hardware or all the features in ICS? What's the point of even having a Galaxy Nexus if all the Apps have been targeted so as to "run on anything"?

App developers want to create state-of-the-art Apps with features that set them apart from all the usual mundane Apps. And when you decide to write those Apps is when you will find out that fragmentation is very real in Android.

In a way, the ejaculation of Android followed by a Heart Attack is kind of a sad thing to watch...

Here's my prediction for mobile OS market share circa 2015:

-- 62 % iOS
-- 13 % Web OS... yes WebOS
-- 08 % Win 8/9/X
-- 07 % Android
-- 10 % Other

Slapppy's not gonna like that.

Props for thinking WebOS might be picked up by someone competent, but I would personally switch its percentage with Windows Phone and up that by ten or so.

Would not that I offend Slappy... HA!

HP will reincorporate WebOS... Better going forward than WOA... and low-cost license to Phones/Tablets in competition to Win 8/9/X and Android'

HP is the only one who can consolidate [the meaningful apps on] Win Desktop and Win ARM... Whoa!

I'm thinking Android will be higher simply because the new feature phones will be counted in with the smartphones. I also think Samsung's Bada could have a good share of the market.

After a year of listening to gloating Android love boys, it is beginning to appear more and more obvious that Android is starting to look more and more like Linux, which for a few years everyone was sure would conquer the world. Funny how the only one who believed in integrated products, at the time, was Steve Jobs.

Within the last 3 months something changed. Just about everyone I saw with a cell phone in the malls during December had the little Apple against their ear. In Southern California all I see around campus's are students with iPhones. During all this time I have only seen one Samsung Galaxy, and due to their size they shouldn't be hard to miss.

Simply, if everyone seems to have iPhones, everyone will want an iPhone. (The beauty of having one iconic logo on the back of the phone, rather than two to three crappy logos cluttering the front)

Maybe finally on AI you can truthfully say how crappy Android phones are, and there won't be five idiots who bought the mentioned crappy phone arguing that their phone isn't so bad.

You clearly don't know what you're talking about. There is something called universal iOS apps?! Ever heard of them?! When Apple released the iPad they included a feature in Xcode that transform the iPhone UI to iPad UI. Developers can either release one app that works on both devices or separate apps for iPhone and iPad.


Why separate app store? Apple already have a system for that. All what developers need to do is include HiRes images within their apps and iOS will use the correct graphics based on the device use. This what Apple did when they released the retina display.

Oh, right, to clarify, you DID mean just phones, didn't you, Dick?

Because if we're including tablets in that, I agree with your existing percentages completely, just add the "Other" directly to "iOS".

I'm thinking that even 7% might be too high for Android in 2015. Shouldn't they have been sued out of existence by then? Some of the big lawsuits, like Oracle's haven't even gotten underway, and Apple is just getting warmed up.

Since Android is all about marketshare and selling phones for not much profit, there might soon come a day when it will be too expensive and it won't make business sense to pay all of the licenses per phone to all of the companies who will have their share due to them. How much does Microsoft receive per phone again?

I also don't believe that Android will be able to attract many repeat customers, as opposed to people who buy Apple's devices.

I'm very delighted to read this. I find it very annoying to the point of nauseating how the Fandroids are much, much, much worse now then the Apple fanboys ever were. Nothing would please me more than Android or at least Google to suffer some sort of big blow that causes them to lose significant market share in the Smartphone market. Is that a bad attitude to have?

I can assure you that, no it is not.

OMG is this seriously a topic of discussion? Do we really need to care if one OS has 560,000 apps and the other has "only" 500,000? Do we need 765 fart apps?

Apple has enough apps. Android has enough apps. Windows needs to catch up, and RIM might as well just file Chapter 7 now. End of story.

Really? "Fart apps"? You seriously need to update your talking points. You could at least go with "don't hold it that way", but honestly all the cool kids are doubling down with "made by slaves."

App store size will only matter when you have over 250,000 apps on your device. It does not matter how large the store is so long as it has the apps you will use. Anything more is irrelevant.

I gotta disagree on this one. More apps give more options and selections. There may be an app that I could or would use but how would I know it is exists unless somone tells me or I see it in the App Store? IIRC, the availability of apps is one reason people are jumping of of Blackberry's ship.

See, Sapppppy was right!

How many app developers make their apps for Android first... and then for iOS?

Or... how many make Android-exclusive apps?

That would be an interesting barometer for this whole topic.

Only a fool believes Eric Schmidt. His RDF is as limp as my friend's dick.

I was at a meeting this evening, one of the guys showed off an App called Autodance which I downloaded on my iPhone 4 while the guy next to me downloaded to his Galaxy S 2.

We both started the Apps together, a pretty dumb but amusing App which involved taking four video clips which get stitched together with a soundtrack added.

So I'm sitting their with the rendering happening with funky animations going on and amusing descriptions on the screen while a loading bar filled up, while he was looking at a blank screen with preparing and a loading circle going round.

My iPhone 4 was finished and I had the clip playing a full fifteen seconds before the SG 2 had finished.

I was asking about the dual core etc, etc and he was very quiet, we'd already had a few discussions on the merits and faults of both systems but at that moment, the penny dropped, the proof was in his hand, right in front of his eyes.

And both ignore that Android is intended and built for more than just smartphone and tablet use. Those other uses in the home, on the road, industry and other yet-to-announced products and services could end up being the much more valuable Android segment.

Yet-to-be-announced is just that: yet-to-be-announced. It doesn't matter where it isn't. We're not talking about surface to air missiles here. And is fragmenting Android even more by throwing it in embedded devices that will never receive updates really the best option?

If it was in embedded devices that would never receive updates, perhaps not. . .
IF those embedded devices needed updates. So far the only product available today is lighting .

Just like Apple, there's a lot going on behind the scenes tho (TV, audio, local and cloud storage, HUD. etc), and neither is speaking "on the record" about most of it.

This is just wishful thinking and hand-waving. "Probably Google is working on cool stuff that will be competitive."

Problem is, Google has little incentive to do much in the embedded and control spaces, since such devices don't drive ad impressions. Unless you're good with your home automation telling you about investment opportunities and cheap light bulbs, don't expect to see much out of Google on this front beyond the typical Google labs somebody-is-doing-it-for-fun.

And sure, any dev can take Android and use it in interesting ways. But without a coherent ecosystem it's just a novelty, the odd device here and there. Google can make vague intimations of Android powered homes, but to make that a reality you have to build a system that people actually want to use, and that takes a lot of work. Work that doesn't happen within Google unless ad money is involved.

It's actually Google's greatest weakness-- they have no way of breaking their utter dependence on ad money. Apple will invest in any product that they think they can make really well and which will transform an industry. They can follow where the technology wants to go. Google can talk about that, but at the end of the day they can only follow those ad impressions.

With Solve for X, Google X, investments in renewable energy, several recent articles concerning actual Google developed and branded hardware, automotive developments and throwing in their new-found appreciation for the necessity and benefit of filing for patents on every possible innovation (as Apple is very good at, and should be), I'll simply agree to disagree. I doubt you'd be convinced anyway so no benefit to arguing about it.

Google likes to have playgrounds where they can enhance their geek cred by showing off fun stuff. That's massively different from a sustained product strategy of the sort that would be required to push Android into areas where ad money isn't driving the economics. Things like "investments in renewable energy" have no bearing whatsoever on Google's actual business model, which is advertising. If you disagree with that, you are willfully ignoring the obvious.

I do disagree with you, going by recent developments and media reports. It looks to me as Google clearly recognizes that they shouldn't depend solely on ad delivery. Besides hardware I see them investing in assorted tech development, basic infrastructure and fiber-optic systems. Some people recognize potential there, while others only see smartphones and tablets when they discuss Apple and Google. No matter really as your opinion is just as valid as mine. Neither of us are privy to the details on what's going on in the labs at Google (or Apple).

Since I read this comment I did some looking. (Keep in mind that this is completely anecdotal and thus, your mileage will vary.)

Of the apps that I have installed on my iPad I could find only 70.0% (exactly the same program or a close equivalent) for an Android phone/tablet. Don't even get me started on the Amazon Market (I quit tracking it after it was floating at about 25% for the first 30 apps.).

So, it is great that for you every app that you need is available on both platforms. Because, for me, who uses my iPad every day for my job there is a sizable gap in what is available for the iOS system and the Android system.

To give you a little more information, I grouped my apps into categories. I also was somewhat generous to Android as I counted smartphone apps even when there was no tablet equivalent available for Android. Here are some of the category percentages:

-eBook Reader: 88%
-Education: 50%
-Engineering: 67% (This actually looks better than it is since the apps missing are the more powerful, expensive, and useful while the cheap/free and simple convenience apps were available.)
-Media (audio/video): 73% (Android did really good until I hit the network apps, which I found surprising. However, given that Android supports Flash this might as well be 100%.)
-Games: 50%
-Art: 66.7%
-Health/Cooking: 75%
-Language Learning: 100%
-Magazines: 0% (I was shocked at this, and it may simply be the magazines that I read.)
-Productivity: 50% (While there were somewhat equivalent products for many of the apps that I use for management and work organization. The quality/feature set difference was stark.)
-Reference: 100%
-Shopping: 83%
-Social Media: 100% (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
-Utilities: 100% (These are simple utilities like timers, password vaults, dropbox, etc.)

In conclusion, Android's market is pretty much just as good as Apple's app store as long as you are using your device for consumption (ebooks, audio, video, social media, email, web, etc.) or general reference (recipes, shopping helper, timers, etc.) and the apps are cheap or free. However, where Android seems to fall WAY behind iOS is in games, education apps, and productivity apps.

The last category is the Android killer for me. As an engineer I am managing several projects and using a decent number of helper apps. These are what is missing from the Android store. And given the well known differences between the two stores (pay out to developers being a huge one for professional apps), I am not surprised to see the report disparity in app submissions. And believe that the gap between truly useful apps and free/cheap, easily slapped together apps is only going to grow between Android and iOS over time. Meaning that while the total number of apps might not show it, the number of quality apps will continue to widen.

Just as curiosity, what type of engineering and app would you need that iOS offers but not the Android Market? These are just the Android paid apps relevant to engineering. Certainly conceivable that there's a specialized one that is available for Apple devices with nothing comparable for Android, but with at least 1000 paid ones (didn't bother with checking the free) I would think most bases would be covered.
https://market.android.com/search?q=...price=2&sort=1

So, to paraphrase Schmidt: "If you don't want people to know what you are eating -- maybe you shouldn't have it in your refrigerator."

AAC in Your Pocket

What's the relationship to engineering apps? Or was there supposed to be? Perhaps the point you were making wasn't clear to me.

GatorGuy at work:



and

Hmm. . .

I did spend a couple of years volunteering at a special needs school in Lake Alfred, Florida with my first wife. Is that what you're referring to? Still not clear how that associates with engineering.

Perhaps your point was you don't see Android Market equivalent apps to your link? I don't know if Tap-toTalk or Voice4u, both available in the Android Market, offer the same functions or not. Have you tried either of them?

LOL at the guys moving the goal posts.

Is that what Dick was getting at? The post by mknopp that I responded to, then Dick referencing Education Apps for Special Needs that aren't available from the Android Market, then finally to his picture story?

I think I see the direction now. Thanks Solipsism.

In the post I quoted you indicated an "app" (in general).

Ah, my typo, added "and" inappropriately and inadvertently. . . Gotcha.

With that said and since you brought it up, are either of the apps I mentioned offering equivalent functionality?

I have no knowledge of your personal life -- so, obviously, I was not referring to that.

The apps you mention have low or no ratings -- and no, I have not tried them.

Proloquo2Go has 4+ ratings -- and according to the description is much more comprehensive than the others:

Proloquo2Go


When I first read about this app, it was in an article that discussed how it enabled a young 11-year-old boy to interact naturally with the outside world -- simple things as ordering his own food in a restaurant... or asking to use the bathroom.

The boys family had an $8,000 pc-based solution that could do some of the same things -- but it was difficult to use and not mobile.

This brought back memories from the early days of our Computer Stores -- where we helped train a young quadriplegic boy to use an Apple ][ with an apparatus that enabled him to press keys by blowing through a straw.

A friend of my daughter teaches disadvantage children... and had submitted a proposal to buy a MacBook...

Everyone in our home has an iPad and a SIMless iPhone -- they are always begging me to buy apps for them.

I bought this app and installed it on all our iDevices...

Then we sat down and we all explored the app, no one was allowed to talk -- we had to use the app.

A very sobering and soul-searching experience...


"I cried because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet." -Anonymous


We loaned an iPad containing the app to the teacher friend -- she changed the purchase request to an iPad.

The friend of your daughter working with disadvantaged children can probably use and appreciate all the assistance you have to offer. It's great to see you reaching out like that.