Apple's iOS to hold development lead over Android, other platforms
Apple's large lead over other mobile platforms is expected to remain firmly in place, according to a new survey of developers.
According to a report by Barrons blogger Tiernan Ray, analyst Toni Sacconaghi of Sanford Bernstein surveyed leading app developers to determine why Apple's iPhone remains for far ahead of Android, despite reports indicating that Android licensees represent a larger group.
Apple's App Store library now stands at 350,000 apps, compared to Android Market's 130,000 titles and far smaller catalogs for other platforms, including RIM's BlackBerry OS, Microsoft's Windows Phone 7, and HP's webOS.
One factor cited was the "45 percent incremental effort" required to port an app from one platform to another, which Sacconaghi interpreted to mean that "platforms beyond iOS and Android will continue to be challenged to develop meaningful developer support."
Interestingly, developers in the survey responded that Android was the easiest platform to write for, followed by iOS. It wasn't clear if this result only referred to matters related to development tools, or also included Apple's app approval process, a factor that many developers have described as frustrating to deal with in getting their apps listed within iTunes.
On the other end of the spectrum, "BlackBerry OS and Symbian were cited as especially difficult to develop on," Sacconaghi said. "We picked up some developer enthusiasm around RIM?s QNX (used in the forthcoming Playbook), while developers talked about a wait-and-watch policy on Windows Phone 7.?
HP's webOS, which it recently demonstrated as powering both new smartphones and a new tablet product, was also said to be easy to be "easy to develop on." The webOS, initially created by Palm, is based on web standards.
Ease of code development is not the only factor that impacts developers. While descried as easy to code for, Android was also noted by developers in the survey to have issues related to "fragmentation of both the software and the hardware profile."
The report added, "that?s not going to change anytime soon, given the various competing interests in the Android market that keep parties from getting on the same page," noting that there are 15 different combinations of screen size and resolutions on Android devices that developers must account for, and "five different combinations for memory specification."
At the same time, Android's hardware fragmentation was described by the developer of Angry Birds as "not the issue, rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem," describing Android as becoming chaotic and "open, but not really open, a very Google-centric ecosystem."
Sacconaghi concluded that the survey results indicate ?continued dominance by the iOS and Android ecosystems," while holding out that "the most significant wildcard to this thesis is the potential emergence of code-conversion (common-runtime) tools that could deliver new apps to all major platforms at very little incremental cost to developers."
Despite the potential for common runtime tools (such as Adobe AIR) to help facilitate the development of cross platform mobile apps, "only one of the dozen developers surveyed is using such tools currently," the report stated.
According to a report by Barrons blogger Tiernan Ray, analyst Toni Sacconaghi of Sanford Bernstein surveyed leading app developers to determine why Apple's iPhone remains for far ahead of Android, despite reports indicating that Android licensees represent a larger group.
Apple's App Store library now stands at 350,000 apps, compared to Android Market's 130,000 titles and far smaller catalogs for other platforms, including RIM's BlackBerry OS, Microsoft's Windows Phone 7, and HP's webOS.
One factor cited was the "45 percent incremental effort" required to port an app from one platform to another, which Sacconaghi interpreted to mean that "platforms beyond iOS and Android will continue to be challenged to develop meaningful developer support."
Interestingly, developers in the survey responded that Android was the easiest platform to write for, followed by iOS. It wasn't clear if this result only referred to matters related to development tools, or also included Apple's app approval process, a factor that many developers have described as frustrating to deal with in getting their apps listed within iTunes.
On the other end of the spectrum, "BlackBerry OS and Symbian were cited as especially difficult to develop on," Sacconaghi said. "We picked up some developer enthusiasm around RIM?s QNX (used in the forthcoming Playbook), while developers talked about a wait-and-watch policy on Windows Phone 7.?
HP's webOS, which it recently demonstrated as powering both new smartphones and a new tablet product, was also said to be easy to be "easy to develop on." The webOS, initially created by Palm, is based on web standards.
Ease of code development is not the only factor that impacts developers. While descried as easy to code for, Android was also noted by developers in the survey to have issues related to "fragmentation of both the software and the hardware profile."
The report added, "that?s not going to change anytime soon, given the various competing interests in the Android market that keep parties from getting on the same page," noting that there are 15 different combinations of screen size and resolutions on Android devices that developers must account for, and "five different combinations for memory specification."
At the same time, Android's hardware fragmentation was described by the developer of Angry Birds as "not the issue, rather the fragmentation of the ecosystem," describing Android as becoming chaotic and "open, but not really open, a very Google-centric ecosystem."
Sacconaghi concluded that the survey results indicate ?continued dominance by the iOS and Android ecosystems," while holding out that "the most significant wildcard to this thesis is the potential emergence of code-conversion (common-runtime) tools that could deliver new apps to all major platforms at very little incremental cost to developers."
Despite the potential for common runtime tools (such as Adobe AIR) to help facilitate the development of cross platform mobile apps, "only one of the dozen developers surveyed is using such tools currently," the report stated.
Comments
Maybe they need to speak to Distimo. Android added 18% more apps in one month, iPhone only 1% month on month. Just like in shipments, iPhone will soon be overtaken in size of app store also, and probably in less than 6 months.
BTW, the article you link to on WP7 is funny. According to Flurry analytics, WP7 is on the same pathway as the Android app store in terms of developer interest, and was boosted by 66% by the Nokia rumours.
Maybe they need to speak to Distimo. Android added 18% more apps in one month, iPhone only 1% month on month. Just like in shipments, iPhone will soon be overtaken in size of app store also, and probably in less than 6 months.
BTW, the article you link to on WP7 is funny. According to Flurry analytics, WP7 is on the same pathway as the Android app store in terms of developer interest, and was boosted by 66% by the Nokia rumours.
Your graph is not even accurate. Apple had 340,000 apps. Come back with more reliable data or more interesting points.
As far as I understand iOS is a unix like os same as Mac os. Android is a dalvik vm running on top of Linux kernel, which means it has no native apps. That is a huge advantage for iOS in terms of capability of the hardware. However a lot of people got trained to write java apps so that may be the reason for easier development for the platform.
There is (or was?) a native or c+ dev kit though haven't heard much about it since it came out...
Your graph is not even accurate. Apple had 340,000 apps. Come back with more reliable data or more interesting points.
Zomg, that supposed ~10% discrepency completely shatters his argument that Apple's Appstore is growing at a significantly slower pace than Android's, and the others.