[cheald]

Gruber's right because the mobile market is expanding. However, his loyalty to Apple keeps him from saying what he really should have said: Get into mobile (Apple AND Android), hard and fast.

About 77 million of the "big two" (60 million Android, 17 million iPhone) smartphones shipped in Q3 2011. Apple has a huge install base, but it's not Apple's game anymore - Android has more than 3x Apple's marketshare, and is on a meteoric rise in contrast to iOS's slow marketshare decline. More and more customers are being introduced to mobile devices, and we're still in the early stages of the mobile landgrab. There's a lot to be won, but it's disingenuous to focus on Apple as the nexus of that growth.

[GHFigs]

It's disingenuous to focus on Apple at a Mac/iOS-centric symposium?

[coderdude]

Why are you even asking? You know that's not what he said.

[GHFigs]

Why are you even asking?

Because this (and several other comments on this submission) appear to attack Gruber for not talking about Android, and I think that is an extremely unfair criticisim given that he was speaking to iOS and Mac developers at an event about iOS and Mac development.

More generally, I have a morbid interest in HN's tendency to flip it's collective shit whenever Gruber's name is mentioned, and have honestly lost faith in my ability to tell when that sort of criticism is intentional or not. So when presented with something that sounds a little dubious, I'd like a clarification. There have been times in this site's past where that was not offensive to anybody.

I hope that answers your question.

You know that's not what he said.

I don't understand why you take issue with my asking a question but then feel permitted to tell me what I know, but I don't care, either, so there's that.

[comedian]

It seems to me that Android is the next Nokia. Large market share but like Nokia their marketshare is almost worthless since Android users dont spend as much money as iOS users. At least that's what everybody's saying.

[nl]

A developer on HN submitted this a few months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2929612

His summary: Android=$4428.08, iOS=$5914 (over the same time period)

So it is true that Android users spent less, but not by a huge amount.

[glimcat]

I think we're taking slightly different lessons from that post.

iOS = $5914, Android and iOS = $10342.08

Between the question of statistical significance and the vagaries of mobile app promotion and discovery, it's hard to say that one clearly pays better. However, both usually pays more if one is paying well, so it would often pay to support both as soon as it is practical to do so.

[evgen]

Given the population numbers presented above it does imply that individual Android users spend considerably less. There is a huge pool of them so the income is similar, but paying customers are harder to find in that huge pool of users. This means that Android devs may encounter the "app store roulette" phenomenon in spades; those apps that have a viable customer acquisition strategy will do well and the long-tail of Android devs will gain far less.

[comedian]

That's 1 developer. doesn't prove your point.