This week we have been taking a step back from our usual tutorials and going back to basics, we have been looking at the Android market and learning why Android is the platform which app makers should be looking to open their app career with. If you want to make an app and become a successful app maker, then there really is only one platform you should consider, that’s right, make an Android app and see your app career succeed.
Today, let us get more details about the Android app market place from research that has been carried out around the world. Research firm Gartner, found that between April and June 2013 over 79% of all handsets sold were running on the Android system, that is in numbers, over 177.9 million handsets in comparison to the lower number of just 31.9 million Apple handsets that were sold in this same time period. This did not include the estimated 62.6% of all tablets shipped to retailers in this same period, 28.2 million tablet style devices were Android in comparison to 14.6 million iPads.
Retail market
With an estimated 1.5 million Android devices being activated each day, it is thought that the Android market could hit the 1 billion mark by the end of 2013. Can you really forego beginning your app development career with Android? Do we need to show you more to prove that Android really is no longer the little sibling to Apple’s iOS?
Apps
But most of the big named apps are released on Apple’s iOS first and sometimes they are even exclusive to the iOS market, doesn’t that make Apple’s iOS still the place to be? To answer this question correctly, have you built up your app audience to the extent that your app being exclusive to the Apple market will cause a frenzy of downloads like these huge highly marketed apps? No, I didn’t think so, these app developers were developing Apple iOS apps for many years, and it is easier for them to continue with the audience they have already created, as Android continues to grow and Apple continues to fall behind, this significant difference will begin to change.
Device styles
If you look at the ease of Apple, they have around 6-8 devices that hold their iOS platform in comparision to the estimated 12,000 different styles of devices that accept Android, developing an app for a limited device style seems easier for developers in comparison to the huge range of Android devices, this figure scares developers, they straight away fear the bugs that could appear on one of the many devices and therefore opt for the easy option with iOS, but this fragmentation of the Android market is being dealt with, with software and improved development tools that encompass the differences. So this reason for choosing iOS over Android no longer exists. Again it becomes clear, that the place to begin to make an app is to make an Android app.