The latest research report from analytics firm Flurry (via TheNextWeb) reveals something that most folks probably won’t find very surprising: app developers prefer coding for iOS than for Android, by a factor of 2 to 1! The reason? According to the report, it’s mostly about the money.
The specific figures mentioned in the report reflect that 69% of mobile apps in Q1 2012 were developed for iOS, compared to 31% for Google’s Android platform. This could be due to a number of factors, including ease of development – writing an app for a small handful of devices is far simpler than ensuring that it works with hundreds of various Android smartphones. Another huge factor, according to the report, is that developers make over four times the money from iOS apps versus Android apps (which make about $0.24 on the dollar in comparison).
Also noteworthy is Android’s software fragmentation – only seven percent of Android devices are running the latest version of the platform, while around 70% of devices are still stuck on Gingerbread, which is over a year old. As such, developers have to write apps that not only work on the latest version of Android, but also support previous versions – this can make it hard to write apps that take specific advantage of Android’s newest features. By comparison, over 75% of iOS users are already using Apple’s most recent iOS 5 firmware.
With figures like these, it’s hardly surprising that Android’s growth has hit a brick wall. Today’s platforms are shaped by developer support, not by new devices being released every 7 seconds.
