

Ask HN: Android development, revenue and compatibility - chrisb

I'm considering writing an app for Android. However, having read a number of blogs/articles it appears to be difficult to make much money from Android, although I haven't been able to find any hard revenue figures from anyone.<p>So, if you've done any Android development, have you made any money?<p>And how much of an issue is compatibility between different platforms?<p>Thanks
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dminor
Compatibility isn't much of an issue unless you are doing something low level
with the NDK, or are using an API that has changed significantly between
versions (most are fairly stable). Otherwise just follow the recommendations
from the Android team for different screen sizes, etc.

I haven't released my app yet and it's going to be free initially anyway, so I
don't have any direct observations on revenue.

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chrisb
Thanks for the information - glad to hear you haven't found compatibility too
much of a problem. I don't plan to do any low-level stuff that might cause a
problem.

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chrisb
Is anyone actually doing any Android development?

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aphyr
We're working on a sizable Android app over at <http://vodpod.com>. We're
hoping to test it it in the next few weeks.

My impression, after two months, is that the architecture is solid. A good
deal of thought has been given to privacy, information sharing, and
interoperability. It's a very open platform, and I think that's a big
strength. On the other hand, it's Java, and there is a lot of infrastructure
required to accomplish simple tasks, such as moving to a new part of the app
or displaying a notification. Perhaps that's my Ruby bias, though. :)

~~~
chrisb
Thanks for the response. It's good to hear your opinion is overall positive
when building a large app.

Java isn't my favourite language/environment either, but I suppose it gets the
job done.

