I’ve yet to meet an API that I didn’t end up wanting to look under the hood of. Given the complaints I’ve read on iPhone development over the years, I very much doubt the IOS API is exception to the rule for me.
IMO they’re more committed to their philosophy than they are to actually making the product better. That looks good if you live and breath open source but it’s a lot less interesting if you like open source only when it yields practical results.
Err… right. Take it from someone who (currently) lives and breathes open-source - there is no connection whatsoever between the philosophy of open source and how much (or little) a company works to make a product better.
12 billion dollars is simply way out of scope with their other investments in Android.
Perhaps - but it’s hardly out of scope when you consider that Motorola Mobility is a company of 19K employees. Although the patents may be the primary driver behind the acquisition, it is not the only thing they are buying.
If Android’s worth that much to them then they should have bought a cheaper little packet of patents
They tried. They failed.
Or they should have let people play the game and used that massive amount of cash on other, more impactful things.
Such as? The market looking completely different in five years is not going to be very useful for Google if Apple et al. delays their products from reaching the market in the meantime. I’m not convinced purchasing Motorola was a brilliant move either, but I can definitely see reasons why the move makes sense. Whether it turns out to be a disaster - well, only time will tell.
In 2009, the android app market brought in 11 million in revenue. In 2010, this grew by 860% to 111 million. And that’s just the official market. I don’t have numbers for Amazon.
Found some more info…
Those 2010 numbers constituted Android having 4.7% of app generated revenue.
However, this recent report from April suggests that Android has captured a huge chunk of that revenue overall, growing to 36% of the revenue generated by apps. That’s an insane amount of growth, and would suggest that, yes, you obviously can make money with Android apps. A lot of money.
Does “app-generated revenue” mean “money paid to developers” or “advertising revenue”? Seems pretty weasel-wordy to me.
I care about the former. A developer shouldn’t really care if her app made $8,083,154 for DoubleClick. She should only care if it put cash in her pocket.
EDIT: Clarifying, to make sure I don’t cause offense, I’m not saying what YOU are saying is weasel-wordy, i’m saying the report you cited was.
At the end of the day, the question is “is the market large enough to support you doing it as your full-time job?” The picture I’ve heard painted by people who develop apps as their livelihood is different from what strategy is saying. But maybe he just knows a different set of people, and I’m behind the times.
Bear in mind that there’s also a considerably business in designing Android apps for the use of individual businesses and areas, which will never go on the app store.
It’s not really possible to do that for the iPhone outside the largest companies (who will have their own in-house people to do much of this).
And numbers will help that? I don’t really see how. As you say - one developers “doing fine” is another developers financial failure. What I do know is that the income I see from just one app (which was nowhere near the Top-500 apps, last I checked) is currently giving me a return on hours spent that exceeds what I earn on my day job. And as mentioned - I do databases for a living and have a Ph.D. on the subject = I do not come cheap. Put another way - if I were 25 again and didn’t have kids, I would seriously consider spending a some years as an indie (at least until the world moves on to the next big thing).
But seriously - you don’t have to take my word for it. There are plenty of developers out there such as Polyclef and Battery Powered Games (to name a couple of the probably more prominent) who do the indie thing on Android with success.
That’s not to deny that the iPhone market is (probably) still more lucrative - but simply put, Nawid’s comments fly in the face of the facts.
Insane growth is Android’s middle name. There are currently >550K Android devices getting activated every day. That’s an insane amount of devices. Eventually it won’t matter if the average Android user only spends half as much as the average IOS user on apps, because there will be more than double as many Android users as IOS users.
The times move fast. Maybe about six months ago, I’d still have agreed with you. Not any longer.
Though I say that with the caveat that most of the developers I have had some dialogue with were still doing quite excellently on the Android space at the time, so clearly success was still possible for those who hit the right spot with the right apps.
That’s not to deny that the iPhone market is (probably) still more lucrative - but simply put, Nawid’s comments fly in the face of the facts.
I’d like to see these facts. That vague chart doesn’t show much.
Insane growth is Android’s middle name. There are currently >550K Android devices getting activated every day.
This is a number I’ve seen reported and it’s another vague, meaningless stat. What does the activation mean? I mean, when I flashed my ROM on my Android, I had to call and activate it again. Does that count? It certainly doesn’t mean 550k Android phones being sold every day.
Android’s picking up all of the non-iOS phone market, I have little doubt, but that number is just garbage.
Actually, yes, it does mean that. An “activation” is a new phone being activated on a cell network for the first time. It’s the measure of phones sold to consumers, as opposed to the manufactuers’ own sellthrough numbers, which would be the number they’ve sold to stores who intend to re-sell them (higher, in other words, since the phones aren’t backordered or anything). So yeah… 550,000 a day. Not meaningless.
Well lets see, I’ve flashed at least a dozen roms on my Evo and never had to reactivate my phone, combined with the relatively low percentage of people that ever root and flash a rom to begin with, means that is essentially a meaningless argument.
But I suppose you could subtract 1% from that “garbage” number to make yourself feel better or something (and that’s probably being generous).
You’re pretty much just talking past me at this point. Although it is pretty silly that you claim that there is no connection between open source success and corporate investment in the same post that you claim that Google has to spend 12.5 billion on patents to defend Android.
Basically what I’m saying is this: Google is investing in making an open mobile OS while Apple is investing in making a good mobile OS. Most of the innovation and design is coming from Apple. Making an open OS isn’t that hard. Apple, MS, Blackberry, etc., could all just open source their mobile OS’s if they wanted to. Google has taken what is only a slightly above mediocre OS and the only real value they’ve added to it is opening it up.
Ultimately the reason that Google is the company most interested in open source mobile OS’s really comes down to revenue. All of the companies in the market right now are trying to make money. Google is a great company, but their real motivation here isn’t some noble cause. Their motivation for creating an open mobile OS is being able to capitalize on mobile search/ad revenue. Apple is actually more interested in making money off of a really good operating system.
Open sourcing things is great, and I can see that it adds value to Android as a platform. That said, when you get down to brass tacks on the quality of the underlying technology, iOS is well ahead.
I’ve yet to meet an API that I didn’t end up wanting to look under the hood of. Given the complaints I’ve read on iPhone development over the years, I very much doubt the IOS API is exception to the rule for me.
This is a good example of you talking past me. Would I like to look under the hood of mobile OS’s? Well it might be nice but it’s hardly necessary. Take the average developer. Now offer them one of the following:
A compiler that generates bad/inefficient object code but is open source.
A compiler that generates optimal object code that is closed source.
99.9% of them are going to prefer the latter and will generate better apps with it.
For example, I think the Android JVM (Dalvik) was shit on release and hasn’t improved that much since. I like Java and all, but without a really good JVM its value is significantly lower to me. So what does an open source JVM do for me? Given that it’s bad am I going to rewrite the whole thing from scratch? Of course not. I work on apps that are significantly more complex than railway time apps but that doesn’t mean I can have my team spend its time working on significant portions of bad Android code.
It seems to me that Android app-market (from a revenue standpoint) is two years behind the Apple market, and still will need two-three years more to catch up, as Apple will grow at good pace and their average buyers seems to buy more apps.
But it will catch up, eventually.
If you say so. Though I suspect that if someone did provide you numbers (and there are numbers out there if you spend a little time looking), you might remember your statistics. For obvious reasons, there are no statistically meaningful numbers in this market (no more than there exist for the App Store).
It certainly doesn’t mean 550k Android phones being sold every day.
Actually, it means pretty much that - though Google does admit the numbers are off since they only count phones that have Google services (i.e., most of the Android phones sold in e.g., China, S. Korea and similar won’t get counted. ).
Yeah right - though that was not what I said. What I commented on was the absurd idea that an OS philosophy has any impact on how much a sane corporation that invests in its product development. Never mind that Google doesn’t even run it’s open-source projects in a community-driven manner.
Basically what I’m saying is this: Google is investing in making an open mobile OS while Apple is investing in making a good mobile OS.
Yep - and this is what I replied to, though apparently you didn’t understand the reply. I’ll try to spell it out more clearly: Rubbish.
Most of the innovation and design is coming from Apple.
And this is the point where I think I’ll drop the discussion. I enjoy discussing technology, but once we start getting this deep into apple-fanboy country, there’s just little point.
Huh? I can’t even parse that sentence and so obviously, no, I don’t understand what you’re saying. I’m pretty sure you’re trying to pin “absurd ideas” on me that I never said (like I said: talking past me). Try again.
And this is the point where I think I’ll drop the discussion. I enjoy discussing technology, but once we start getting this deep into apple-fanboy country, there’s just little point.
What is the least bit fanboyish about what I’m saying? The mere fact that I’ve looked at both companies and think one is doing more innovation? I’m just an experienced mobile developer talking about my experiences. Rewind just 4 years ago and you’ll find a market that was dominated by dumb phones, shitty smartphones, and a stagnant app market. Google was working on a phone at that time which would have changed very little of that. Apple, whether you like them or like Google, gets credit for the market we have today and have done almost all of the heavy lifting for moving the market forward.
What innovation do you feel is coming from Google right now? You’d better come up with something better than widgets. ;-) Android has had some features that iOS lacked but usually iOS lacked those features by design and by now those disparities are mostly gone and Android has even picked up a number of iOS’s later solutions. IMO, Android has been playing follow the leader and very little innovation has come from the platform. I do think it’s good that Android is there, competing with iOS, and pushing more open solutions, but none of that is innovation in and of itself.
Not helped by typos, of course - my apologies. I’ll try to reduce the verbiage:
IMO they’re more committed to their philosophy than they are to actually making the product better.
Basically what I’m saying is this: Google is investing in making an open mobile OS while Apple is investing in making a good mobile OS.
= absurd comments.
What is the least bit fanboyish about what I’m saying? The mere fact that I’ve looked at both companies and think one is doing more innovation?
Pretty much, yes. It’s been very interesting to read your impassioned arguments based on technology as to why XCode and the IOS API are superior to the competition (although - as I started out by saying - developers differ in their needs and consequently will rarely agree on an ideal). If I want to read standard Apple/Android fanboy talking points, though, I can just go read the comments box of any Apple or Android blog/news site.
Btw - since when did level of developer experience imply an inverse correlation with level of fanboyism?
