[retskrad]

It's funny how on the desktop, Windows has more apps and developers generally target it before MacOS. On mobile, it's the opposite where developers make apps for iOS first and release the Android version months/years later, even though Android has a 70% marketshare in mobile.

[layer8]

Android may have 70% device market share, but iOS has close to 70% of app store revenue market share. This is because iDevice ownership correlates with higher spending on apps. In other words, publishing an iOS app is more profitable than publishing an Android app.

Even for free apps, if they are associated with an optional payed service (like Zotero Storage), it can make economical sense to publish an iOS app first.

[acdha]

It all comes back to revenue: Android has twice the market share but users are about as third as likely to pay for apps / in-app purchases so the market is a lot more even than it might seem. I don’t think that’s because android users are significantly more inclined towards piracy but rather that there are really two groups, and the ones who bought the cheapest phone they could find contribute market share only for free apps.

[HumblyTossed]

I wonder if that’s a self fulfilling prophecy. They expect android users to pay less therefore there tends to be a worse experience ( ads or no app at all) therefore android users are conditioned that apps are worthless.

[acdha]

It might have something to do with side loading making piracy easier but I really think it’s as simple as there being distinct groups within the Android community. I would be surprised if the figures for app spending weren’t pretty similar if you compare people who spent roughly the same amount on their phones.

[thaumasiotes]

> and the ones who bought the cheapest phone they could find contribute market share only for free apps.

This can't really be true; it would imply that the actual value of all phone apps is zero, and the only reason people pay for them is that they need to get rid of some cash.

[dotancohen]

A more compelling argument might propose that the paid or expensive apps are simply not appealing enough to those whose primary factor when selecting a phone is price.

[jampekka]

If someting isn't paid for it has no value?

[beepbooptheory]

A very smart man a while back proposed that any given thing has two kinds of value: use value and exchange value. One does not necessarily overlap with the other, yet both can totally capture a things "value" depending on where you start.

[thaumasiotes]

If something has value of its own, then it will be purchased regardless of whether other unrelated products are or aren't purchased.

Thus, in order for people who don't find iPhones particularly valuable to contribute zero market share to the independent market for phone software, it can only be the case that phone software has no value.

[layer8]

It will only be purchase by people who can afford it and who find it worth the price. If someone doesn’t purchase it, there is no implication that they see zero value in it.

[throw10920]

...and if there's piracy involved, then even people who can afford it and find it worth the price may not pay for it.

[jampekka]

So e.g. Hacker News has no value? Or Linux? Or sex without prostitution?

[acdha]

It’s just that people who don’t have money don’t spend it. If you have a ton of senior citizens getting lifeline phones, it doesn’t tell you much about the spending habits of Android users who aren’t on fixed incomes.

[filmgirlcw]

> It's funny how on the desktop, Windows has more apps and developers generally target it before MacOS.

I would say this is true for certain types of apps. Games, indisputably are Windows-first (and no matter what the Apple Game Porting Toolkit offers, without Apple going full Valve, this will remain the case), and certain business applications (AutoCAD, some medical stuff, other highly-specific and niche engineering apps, internal LOB apps for corporate clients environments) are either Windows-only or best on Windows, but I would argue that since at least 2005 or 2006, the amount of good software that is Mac-first or Mac-only is significantly higher than any other platform.

Obviously, in 2024, the web is the main application platform. The web won. But despite having a smaller market share (and today the market share is higher than any other time), there has long been a disproportionate ratio of good software on Mac versus other platforms.

[carlosjobim]

Android users don't want to pay for apps, that's why they get lower priority in general.

[tomrod]

Indeed. Fdroid is amazing compared to the hot mess of ads of the play store.

[feitingen]

This is also self-reinforcing, since apps worth paying for are released on ios first.

[filmgirlcw]

Yes and no. The Android Market was only a few months behind the App Store (paid apps took another year) but when Android started to take off, lots and lots of developers started to try to come to Android in a big way and some even experimented with being Android first. But they all largely failed. Companies that actively invested in trying to be Android-first for a paid app have largely failed or been relegated to a very specific niche.

First, I think it was because the tooling was so much worse for Android than iOS, especially in the early years. And Google didn’t bother enforcing or even really outlining any HIGs for the longest time. It didn’t help that every Android maker had its own skin for the longest time (that is mostly over now, except for Samsung and some Chinese phone makers — and I would argue Samsung has a distinctive brand now that people buy their phones for their interface. They don’t want stock Android, they want the Galaxy Android experience).

But then even when you did have hit phones, like the first Motorola Droid and the Samsung Galaxy S (where the Galaxy S3 was a huge moment) and better dev tools, you still didn’t have users willing to pay for apps or even IAP. And it is hard to justify heavy-investment into a platform that people won’t pay for if your primary business is selling an app.

It also helps that iOS users typically have devices that are updated more regularly and that iOS devices are supported longer. And or course, there are fewer devices to test (though far more than there used to be).

[dagmx]

Add to that, there’s a huge variance in device hardware, form factors, OS versions and API support for Android. As well as poorer UI APIs and harder to integrate C code (important to sharing cross platform libs).

The ROI on delivering a *good* experience for Android users is really low.

[windexh8er]

This is an old trope that's not nearly as relevant as you seem to imply. It is also the same problem Apple would have with laptop and desktops, but is really not an issue.

I, personally, believe that the platform has very little to do with that disparity of revenue at this point - but it is directly related to the demographic purchasing the phone. Android phones are often much easier to acquire with fewer financial resources. That is not the market Apple has targeted or has wanted to cater to in their quest to position themselves as a more premium brand. In some cases they may be and in others it is a marketing facade that people have bought into.

But, the reality is to deliver a good experience on Android isn't any harder than that same experience on Apple. Is it as financially rewarding? Probably not, again due to the difference in overall demographic of users. But I think it has very little to do with technical limitations or variances as described.

[dagmx]

In what way is it an irrelevant trope?

Just look at how apps are handled by the variety of folding Android phones today or devices with unusual aspect ratios. You get clipping and stretching in a lot of cases, even as recently as the latest Pixel Fold

iOS has much better UI libraries than Android. They also have a better constraint and relative positioning system that allows for UI to adapt to changes in screen ratios.

And none of that even addresses the disparity of Android versions in use. Yes, Google Play and Jetpack help paper over some of that, but good luck if you need to use a non-Google Play device or need to deal with some of the APIs that just don’t get shimmed. Or if you’re using graphics APIs and need to deal with the vendor and OS specific deviances in Vulkan implementation.

I very much disagree with your dismissal of it as a dated trope. As a game and app dev, targeting Android is incredibly annoying even today and results in targeting the most popular models in a demographic and hoping things scale outwards.

[windexh8er]

I didn't say "irrelevant" - and I do agree with parts of your statement. As I said, it's not nearly as relevant to the context of the argument. The argument being that it's hard to deliver ROI (look at the grandparent comment) on Android because of technical limitations.

And, as I said, I "personally" believe this to be true. Android was much harder to develop for previously. It's a lot better. And I do see some of the same problems in the IOS ecosystem when I try to run apps clearly written for iPhone form factors on iPad.

But, my argument was stating that ROI was not really tied to the technical limitations (again I personally believe this to be true, being a mostly Android user) as stated and more on the demographic of user.

TL;DR I, personally, don't believe that technical limitations create ROI disparity between IOS and Android store revenue.