Comments on: One Year Later, iOS Is Still the Best Development Platform

By: Derek

Derek — Tue, 17 May 2011 06:29:10 +0000

Talking about development platforms. I’ve been working with the android tooling for a couple of weeks now. Compared to my previous experience with XCode and iOS, the android tool set is amazingly bad. Slow, buggy, difficult to control and use, with large chunks feeling more like very early beta code than a usable development platform. They have a lot of work to do to get anywhere near XCode.

By: Martin Hill

Martin Hill — Tue, 17 May 2011 03:23:20 +0000

Geoffrey,
Android’s installed base is most definitely NOT larger than iOS. Where did you get that idea from?

ComScore reported only 2 weeks ago that the current installed base for iOS was 59% larger than Android in the USA and 116% larger in Europe.

Google announced at IO that 100 million Android devices had now been sold. In contrast, Apple has sold 187 million iOS devices, the vast majority sold in the last 2 years.

Even in new unit sales Android and iOS are still jockeying for the number one position with both shipping around 33 million units during the Christmas quarter.

In fact, for the first time since Android began it’s break-neck growth, NPD’s most recent unit sales data shows that Android’s share of the US smartphone market dropped quarter-to-quarter from 53% to 50% in Q1 2011. That’s a -6% growth rate for all those Android fans enamoured with “growth rate” percentages.

In contrast Apple’s iPhone grew 115% to capture 28% of all smartphone sales in the USA thanks to the launch of the iPhone on Verizon. With upcoming rumoured CDMA iPhone launches in China and possible availability on T-Mobile in the USA and the release of the iPhone 5 later in the year, this will only increase.

Just sayin. :-)

-Mart

By: Roel

Roel — Mon, 16 May 2011 20:38:23 +0000

The way things are looking, WP7 may never take off. Can´t see a reason any OEM could choose WP7 over Android (both looking for OEMs). Android is way more popular, has the apps and its free. Can´t beat that.

iOS has an advantage over Android (my opinion) because Apple owns the hardware and the software, has a a better user interface, owns the whole ecosystem, its secure and has more and better apps.

In this mobile market Microsoft seems doomed.

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 16 May 2011 20:20:26 +0000

We don’t tend to develop for those platforms because the market penetration is too low to justify the expense, no matter how easy it is. iPhone development gives us the most productivity and efficiency when it comes to reaching our market.

By: Tomas McGuinness

Tomas McGuinness — Mon, 16 May 2011 18:45:48 +0000

Did you discount other platforms because of their size? The Windows Phone 7 development experience is far better than the iPhone development environment. WebOS is also a very pleasant development experience.

You seem to have just ignored these? Popular doesn’t always equate to best.