
Pros and cons of iOS and Android mobile app development - pawel_ha
http://www.slideshare.net/WhallaLabs/mobile-application-development-ios-vs-android
======
gressquel
I develop for Android and iOS, and I usually create the iOS app first. Publish
it to the market and kinda try to feel how the market responds, if its
positive I make the Android down the road. If its negative, I try to add
functionality and launch version 2. If its also negative, then I just kill the
app.

Main issue with Android for me as a sole developer is, fragmentation and lack
of paying users. The fragmentation part is really horrible, I have hired
people to test my app extensively and regardless of how flawless I think my
app is upon launch it crashes and burns. Designing an app for all the
different screen sizes are extremely difficult. Testing on emulator is never
adaquate.

As mentioned in the slide, iOS users pay for the app if they like it. When it
comes to Android-users there is a get-everything-free culture. You can argue
that if people won't buy then its the developers fault for not creating a good
enough product, but I do believe its shared fault here.

~~~
pjmlp
How are your sales per demographic?

One of the reasons nontechnical users root their iOS devices is to install
pirate copies.

Maybe some fellow compatriots will correct me as being wrong, but this happens
a lot in Portugal, taking the people I know as sample.

~~~
gressquel
Its exactly like the purchasing powers of the different countries. So in
northern, west and central europe alot of people buy. Same for the
commonwealth countries. In Asia, Hong Kong and Japan has more buy rate than
the other countries. But apart from this there is really shocking amount of
people who use the free credits and refuse to buy.

But I try to stay positive, I have considered blocking certain countries' app
store.

------
cageface
I'd say the iOS simulator is better than the Android emulator, although it's
much better than it was. But Xcode is in no way a better IDE than Android
Studio. It's not even close. Xcode is a marginally usable text editor with
almost no "IDE" features. Android Studio + Java is probably as good as a
commercial IDE gets when it comes to code editing, generation, and
refactoring.

~~~
Buetol
But the iOS simulator is very limited (no push notifications, no camera) and
developping on device with android is better in my opinion (easy port
forwarding so you can access you local server as localhost)

On the other side, with react-native you get an uniform debugging experience
and easy re-usability of your components.

~~~
Osis
Regardless of what you choose, always check your app on real devices before
shipping.

Simulators have come a long way but they still don't replicate the real world.

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BoorishBears
Every pro for Android save ad revenue is a con in reality.

Diverse devices, market share = Fragmentation, DPI issues, OEM breaking apps
their images with customizations, popular hardware years behind the curve of
computing power still coming out

Diverse demographics: I've seen people ban entire regions of Eastern Europe
from their apps because of the 1 star generic "Is Virus" type of low effort
review. I don't know what it is with Android and certain parts of the world
that disproportionately misused reviews. Apple has a similar problem but to a
much lesser extent, and the hybrid per version rating system helps.

Android also makes you deal with taxes in all those regions, essentially
making you the seller instead of the store, where Apple handles all of that.

------
Someone
Blog version, adding Windows Phone: [http://whallalabs.com/mobile-application-
development-ios-vs-...](http://whallalabs.com/mobile-application-development-
ios-vs-android-vs-windows-phone) (linked-to from halfway through the
presentation)

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redbergy
In the third slide, "Apps have an audience 2.5x as big as mobile websites".
I'd love to see data behind how the author came to that conclusion.

Isn't anyone who is able to download an app from an app store in the same
audience as someone who would view a mobile web site? Beyond that, I feel like
it's much harder to get a user to download an app than to view something on
the mobile web. Downloading an app is a commitment for a user to allow a third
party on to their device with many more privileges than a web site would get.

It's hard for me to take that statement at face value.

~~~
pawel_ha
Hi, here is the source of the data:
[https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations-and-
Whitepap...](https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Presentations-and-
Whitepapers/2015/The-2015-US-Mobile-App-Report)

~~~
redbergy
Thanks looking forward to digging in to this. Great presentation by the way,
was just having a little trouble around that one stat.

~~~
pawel_ha
Thanks, glad you liked it!

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on_and_off
>6 apps with 40% more lines of code has shown that it costs 30% more to
develop on Android.

Wow, my brain hurts after reading something that stupid

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jorgemf
The argument that one platform is cheaper to develop in than the other based
on the lines of codes just put me off.

