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).
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.
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.
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.
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.