

iOS first – a flawed strategy that startups have used for years - wesselkooyman
http://www.colestreet.com/ios-first-flawed-strategy-startups-used-years-heres/

======
onion2k
One of the most important things you learn when you're launching a startup is
that the product has to match the market, and the market is never "everyone".
You don't have that sort of marketing reach on a startup budget. Startups can
get the word out through social media (people the founders know), people the
founders and investors network with, through startup and early-adopter
technology news (TC, HN, BetaList, ProductHunt, etc), through advertising if
they have a budget for it, and, for a lucky few, through mainstream news if
they're clever.

Social, networks and tech news are all going to be 'iPhone heavy', and
although that is changing, it's still enough to make iOS a sensible choice to
market to first.

TL;DR The fact that the Android market is bigger is irrelevant if you can't
reach that segment of the market with your contacts and/or a very limited
marketing budget.

~~~
wesselkooyman
This is exactly my point when i talk about the "tech bubble". iOS users keep
telling themselves the numbers are somehow lying, and that their market is the
early adopters, and that that market is decent sized. I don't think we
appreciate how small that world is. But since it includes 90% of our direct
peers, it feels bigger than it is.

~~~
err4nt
I live in Canada and literally everybody in my life, except for one friend who
is a huge Android fanboy, uses iOS. I don't have a phone, but I can still
iMessage everybody else I know from my tablet except for one person.

Now I love the idea of android, I love the technology and I use Linux daily on
web servers so I get the customizeability and the appeal, but let's face it -
if I write an iOS app I can send that to nearly everybody I know. If I write
an android app only one person I know _could_ install it.

~~~
mkr-hn
Everyone I know uses Android and Windows. Anecdotes don't say much about
markets.

------
wmt
I'd really want this article to be true and that developing for Android first
would be an equally good strategy. However, the claim that IOS-first is
irrational is just dishonest. While Android total money spent in apps is
gaining, iOS has been a solid leader for its entire history. Every decision to
go for Apple first has been a correct one.

This is perfectly summed up by the first comment on the page: "All I know is
that my $3.99 iOS app outsells my $3.99 Android app 5-10:1"

~~~
wesselkooyman
Hi, i'm the author. The point i was trying to make is that all we know is that
we're looking at an incomplete picture. App store revenue is by far not the
only way to make money with an app - i use CRM apps as an example, but many
SaaS platforms have a supporting app, and we're not measuring that revenue at
all. Neither are we measuing ad revenue.

But i agree, there's lots of anecdotal evidence either way :)

~~~
manicdee
Can you provide me an example where it makes sense for a startup to produce
software for free to support some commercial software they don't own?

If they're bankrolled by the commercial product's vendor, aren't they really a
contract programming shop, not a startup?

------
VSpike
I live in a tech bubble, but I see a pretty even distribution of iOS vs.
Android devices. Is this a US versus Europe thing, perhaps?

Android phones and tablets seem pretty popular among UK geeks - at least as
much as iOS. In fact, I frequently encounter among geeks a sort of snobbery
against iOS - "it's eye candy for non-techy consumers". That view is not
universal - like I say, it's a mixed picture - but it is significant.

~~~
wesselkooyman
Maybe the Apple worshipping is over its peak! Until recently i lived in Paris,
wherever you go in the tech/startup scene, it's an Apple-only world. I would
literally sit there surrounded by 20-30 MacBook Air's and be the only non-
Apple laptop! Made for lots of weird stares.

------
simonh
So in an article mainly criticizing the historical decision of developers to
release on iOS first, this guy publishes a graph showing that historically
considerably more than double the money has been spent on iOS apps than
Android apps. Then he calls developer's tendency to release on iOS first over
that period irrational.

OK

~~~
danmaz74
He isn't criticizing the "historical decision". He is criticizing decisions
being taken now.

~~~
simonh
Perhaps you should read the title of the article, and reconsider your comment
in that light.

~~~
dkersten
From the article:

 _We’re so focused on revenue from the app store, that we ignore some facts:
lots of apps support other platforms, and generate revenue on other ways. My
phone has a great SalesForce CRM app on it – it’s free. But of course our
company pays for the CRM! Apps also often drive revenue on other platforms. In
Android apps, you can freely send users to another platform to do a
transaction – how much revenue is generated that way? iOS blocks this, by the
way, and insists on a 30% cut.

Other apps are ad based, and that revenue can come from any one of hundreds of
ad exchanges. Again, none of that revenue is part of this graph._

~~~
simonh
If iOS didn't have apps that generate revenue in those ways you might have a
point, but it does.

The question you need to answer is why you think the platform with the lower
user engagement stats, lower online purchasing metrics and lower app revenue
stats is likely to benefit from them more than the leader in all those other
metrics.

~~~
dkersten
_I_ didn't make any point. I was merely pointing out that the article covered
non-app-store revenue generation (at least a little).

I don't make apps, so I don't really care either way, though to add anecdotal
evidence to the mix: where I am there seems to be a pretty even split between
Android and iOS users.

------
AshFurrow
> I’ve talked to lots of Android and iOS teams, and they say if they implement
> the same app on both platforms, the development time is roughly the same,
> and testing on Android is mostly a non-issue, as you can do it on your
> computer in emulators.

Interesting. I've heard just the opposite, in fact: that iOS is significantly
faster to develop on and that testing is a nightmare that must be done
manually on-device. I would have liked the author to back this claim up with
more than just anecdotes.

~~~
rsynnott
I think a lot of this comes down to exactly what you're doing. For instance,
if you're doing networking, getting fancy with the camera, or doing even
slightly low-level OpenGL stuff, Android's likely to be more painful,
especially in terms of testing, and old-version quirks.

Fun minor example; before Android 4.3 or so (and only about 25% of Android
users are on >=4.3), if, using the default HTTP library, you make a request to
a server that uses HTTP compression, and the request returns a successful no-
content result, like 204, that'll trigger a null pointer exception in the guts
of the HTTP library. There are lots of these quirks; by themselves they're
minor, but they build up.

With things like the camera, it's worse, as vendor customisation comes into
play.

~~~
BugBrother
But if you're not doing anything fancy, wouldn't a JavaScript variant be
better? [E.g. potentially X-platform.]

~~~
rsynnott
I've yet to use a mobile web app (or phonegap thing, etc) which didn't make me
want to tear my hair out. I mean, it may be possible to make such a thing, but
people generally don't.

------
coldtea
> _and it was the phone of ‘poor people’ – people that didn’t spend money on
> their phones._

I don't see that change anytime soon. Simply for the fact that tons of Android
phones are sold at the cheapest tier, where people used to buy feature phones,
whereas there's no iPhone catering to the lower end of the market (not even
5C).

Plus, his diagrams shows Android below iOS in payments to developers but
"catching up". What it doesn't say is that Android has larger market share, so
that it's below on payments (and thus app sales) is problematic.

------
josephlord
The question is if you have haven't validated your product yet do you develop
for iOS, Android or use a cross platform toolkit like PhoneGap. I think the
answer will depend on what you have experience with, who your target market is
and whether you want to target tablets (which still leans towards iOS in my
view).

Validate on one platform and then expand to another if it works is my current
approach but it definitely isn't the only one.

------
kosmopolska
> If you look at this graph, in less than 12 months, Android will dominate in
> this final metric.

I can't really see that in the graph, and anyhow you can't really predict
what's going to happen from previous performance or trends. I'm not saying it
won't happen, but I don't see it as inevitable.

------
coldtea
He doesn't seem to understand the notion of opportunity cost.

That it's sometimes wise to leave money of the table, if you have to spread
yourself think and work twice as hard for diminishing returns.

iOS first is perfectly fine for launch. Tons of highly succesful apps did just
that.

You don't have to mess with the fragmentation (even though the latest party
line is that "it's not that big a deal"), and you get access to the more
lucrative demographic in general (sure, there are billionaires using Android
too -- but in average, iOS users pay more for their phones, and get higher
wages).

------
richardw
A counter-argument from April (they started on Android, 16 months later moved
to iOS), with HN discussion:

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/06/the-fallacy-of-android-
firs...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/06/the-fallacy-of-android-first/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7543642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7543642)

The answer is probably: it depends.

------
jljljl
>>> In Android apps, you can freely send users to another platform to do a
transaction – how much revenue is generated that way? iOS blocks this, by the
way, and insists on a 30% cut.

This feels like a key insight...I wonder how many android apps are using
alternatives to Google Play for their transactions, and how this affects the
revenue numbers.

------
nb1981
I develop for iOS first because I want to. It's the platform I choose to use.
I, personally, don't care for Android. The ONLY reason for me to develop for
it is money. That's a recipe for shitty work. Does it have to be more
complicated than that? If I'm making a mistake, so be it. What do you care?!

~~~
chippy
Some people would argue that "I" and "What do you care?!" is an example of
inward focus, not looking outward towards the user.

Such people would say that ethical and good development should improve the
overall human condition and that it should help people somehow. Some others
would say at least by doing so it should increase profits for the company than
being inward focused.

I think the article is saying that it is irrational not to be developing for
Android - even if a developer doesn't like it, they should be making more
money...

~~~
nb1981
Depends on what you want out of your career as a developer; again, personally,
I try to make things that I want/need myself because I find doing it the other
way (looking for a hole on the market and filling it, for example) doesn't
give me what I want. The motivation is all wrong and I get no satisfaction
from that kind of success.

The difference, to me, is whether you're focussed on the product or the
reward. I try to focus on the product because that's the best long term
strategy in my opinion.

"good development should improve the overall human condition" uh - that's a
lot of pressure. I just want to make stuff. Not everything we do has to have a
goal, a target. Just build.

------
splattne
Instagram is a counter-example though.

~~~
kelnos
To what? The author is specifically talking about making money directly from
your app, which Instagram didn't do until recently (well after they released
an Android version). And even then, it looks like their monetization strategy
is to sell what appears to be a _very_ limited number of ads-as-posts.

~~~
fpgeek
Instagram's monetization strategy was selling the company. That effectively
required an Android version to protect and maximize their network's value.

I wonder if Instagram would have gotten more money if they'd embraced Android
sooner (like WhatsApp).

