[eropple]

> Content producers need to do their part alongside developers to make it great

Uh...why? Why should they "do their part" for a platform where they have no users and don't see a likely growth of them?

I am an Android user and developer, but I am also realistic.

[garuda]

Because that investment will pay off over time as more and more people move to Android, and a platform that isn't controlled by a single company will make innovation easier for everyone.

[Steko]

Most businesses aren't run as charities. If I can make 80 times the money from iOS as from Android I don't care if it's open or closed. Hot dog vendors are not looking to build your utopia. If there's a free place they can sell hotdogs but only bring in $10 a day and there's a highly regulated place where they can bring in $800 a day they are going to take the one where they make more money.

Android already has the bulk of the market share, if they are losing 80 to 1 there's something fundamentally broken in the ecosystem. Stop blaming the hot dog vendors.

[eropple]

There's some legwork to do to make the claims you're making. Maybe you should step back and establish niceties like why people who are in their target demos will flock to Android "over time" and quantify how the NPV of investing now will pay off later.

[garuda]

It's well known that Android has overtaken iOS in terms of the base OS. A hardware advantage that Apple had is almost gone now, so the only thing missing is content. I don't think iOS buyers are fanatics or taken in by marketing because there is more marketing of Android. I think they have been choosing a better product.

So, now that hardware and the OS no-longer favor iOS, it's simply down to content providers to make the investment. Technologists bought in to Android because it's open, long before it became the best platform. Why shouldn't content producers do the same?

[Steko]

"It's well known that Android has overtaken iOS in terms of the base OS. "

This is not well known, although it's an opinion often voiced here.

"Why shouldn't content producers do the same?"

Because they are not utopian technologists? This article is about a content producer that invested in Android yet failed. Instead of talking about how the content producers need to do more, we should be talking about why this effort failed.

Here's a start: when you buy an iphone today the Newsstand is one of a handful of Apps you start with. It's featured and people click on it and then many of them start buying and consuming content. What is the competing experience on Android? I assume there's no equivalent to the standalone Newsstand App installed by default on the phone. I assume they hit Play, which incidentally is terribly named and many customers never click on ever because they think it only leads to pokemon. Then they have to know that Magazines on their Device are a thing now and find them on which may be easy or hard in Play but is still an order of magnitude harder than it is on iOS.

[eropple]

> It's well known that Android has overtaken iOS in terms of the base OS.

I wouldn't say it's "well known" at all and I certainly wouldn't say it in such definite terms--and I am an Android user.

> Why shouldn't content producers do the same?

Because they have not yet decided that their projected returns from devoting significant resources to Android outweighs the opportunity costs? They have no ties to Android unless they will realize benefits from targeting it. The purchase patterns of current Android customers doesn't make me as a user and a fan of the platform think they're going to make back their money on investment, so I certainly don't think that they're unreasonable to want to actually see some assurances of a decent return before investing in the platform.

[rbarooah]

Sorry, Android is controlled by a single company.