App Developer Conversations: Android News & Apple Critiques

In this App Developer Conversations we dug into some recent Android news and some critiques coming out of Apple.

We focused on a couple key areas:

• What’s the impact of Andy Rubin leaving the Android team at Google?
• The table market is becoming so large companies can focus on just making apps for tablets

Be sure to visit MobileDevHQ to see the how to be successful with apps in China

Take a look for yourself and see if you learn something new. Be sure to let us know in the comments if there are other areas we can address!

The Transcript:

Robi: Hello. Welcome to App Developer Conversations. We’ve got Ryan Morel
back. You look a little tan. I hope you had fun in Hawaii. Ian is also
back from Hawaii.

Ian: Doesn’t look tan, because I stay in the shade.

Robi: Ian Sefferman of MobileDevHQ. I’m Robi Ganguly of Apptentive. Now
that the gang is back together, we’re going to talk about some new and
some old news, I guess. Let’s start off with something that’s old but
it’s always funny when it happens; Phil Schiller told us that Android
sucks, which is like, “Okay. Phil Schiller’s talking.” Then Android’s
chief, Andy Rubin is leaving. How about you talk to us a little bit
about the Android news around and Rubin leaving the [inaudible: 00:44]
and going into something else for Google.

Ian: I think it’s a potential huge shake-up. It could be really good, it
could be really bad. Andy Rubin has done a fantastic job of having a
vision of an open source operating system, finding a company who could
help get distribution for that operation system in Google, and making
it sort of . . . it’s not the standard, because I think iOS is the
standard to everybody here, but it is certainly comparable to the
standard; has huge numbers. That being said, if they do want to become
the standard, they’re going to have to figure out a 10x play and maybe
that involves shaking things up every once in awhile. This could work
out for them really well for them.

Robi: Do you have any thoughts on it?

Ryan: Yeah. I think it’s been an amazing run for Android; we all know that.
I think questions start to get raised when you have a market size that
is 5x the size of another, yet ¼ the size of the revenue. That starts
to become a little bit . . . that’s way out of balance. Then other
questions start to come up when you have OEMs with leverage. Amazon,
right across the street here, has essentially their own version of
Android, which Google has no control over. We can bet Samsung is
continuing to just push on their own version of Android, if not, going
to move slowly; Tizen, or whatever the hell they call their thing. Now
all of a sudden, you take those two players out of what you would
consider the core Google Android audience, and you’ve got problems.
You’ve got [inaudible: 02:28] devices.

Robi: I think that is probably Phil Schiller’s point. Phil Schiller is
like, “This fragmentation is real and it’s really messing with
consumers experiences, and look at the data. Sure, they have more
devices than us, a lot more now, but our people use their devices way
more often that are consuming more data.” When you think about it from
the developer’s perspective, we’re always talking about which
platforms developers prefer, what approach. It seems like you’ve got
to be developing for both if you’re going to be in this long-term.
This issue, are you seeing in your business what Phil Schiller is
saying, in terms of there being more money, people are using it more
often?

Ian: Yeah. The short answer to that is, yes. There’s obvious caveats to
that, and we talk about Amazon as a caveat to that. In the standard
Android world, absolutely, iOS rules the day.

Robi: How does this play out? Do we just get to hear for the next 10 years,
“Android sucks”? Then everybody’s buying Android devices. Is this the
scenario?

Ryan: I think at some point, people need to recognize that it’s okay to
have different audience segments. This has always been Apple’s play.
Apple’s like, “I don’t want these people who want free devices. We
don’t want them.” It’s arguable for game developers; you don’t want
them either, because they’re not paying you any money. Then there’s a
certain segment of the Android population, like you and other people
buying the Galaxy Nexus 3 and Nexus 4. Sorry.

Ian: Galaxy S3.

Ryan: Yeah, Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S4, etc., those are the high-end scope.
When you look at the handset breakdown between them, it’s still iOS.
If I’m a developer, I’m thinking about how do I maximize my game for
these handsets that appeal to this higher-end audience and then not
care so much about this lower end audience, maybe?

Robi: Then there is another side to this I think, which is Schiller and
Apple are up there saying fragmentation’s bad, it’s really hard for a
consumer to have a consistent experience, and their developers’ lives
are easier, but we continue to see more and more devices coming out of
them supporting different things. iPad 2 is different from the iPad 3,
which is different from the iPad Mini, which is different from the
iPhone 5, which is different from the iPhone 4S. There’s no shortage
of things that are confusing about the iOS ecosystem at this point.
Are you seeing any of that stuff coming out, playing out? Are you
hearing from developers, that that is becoming more challenging?

Ian: We really talk after the development cycle, but I haven’t actually
heard that. People still bang on that drum, and I think of Android is
fragmented but iOS is not. I think part of that is because Apple says,
“Android is fragmented and we are not.” People just listen to them. It
is fragmented.

Robi: I’m definitely seeing people developing just and iPad app or just an
iPhone app now. More and more being like, “I’m just choosing this one
thing. I’m just going after this. It’s too complicated to think about
the experiences across both.”

Ian: It’s probably right to do that. Depending on what your app is, there
are different use cases between having an app on your phone and having
an app on a tablet.

Ryan: Yep. We’ve talked about this before; they’re all big enough now. When
the iPad first released, an iPad-only app was a guaranteed failure.
Now, there are 120 million of them or something ridiculous. That’s a
huge market of people who are spending a lot of money. Perfect, Super
Cell, a good example, there’s an article about that making . . .
they’re calling the iPad the perfect gaming device or something, and
they’re focused almost solely on that.

Robi: Wow.

Ryan: Anyways.

Robi: Anything else?

Ryan: It’s good to be back.

Robi: Welcome back.

Ryan: I missed you guys.

Robi: We missed you, too. We talked about you quite a bit in the last ones
we showed, actually.

Mark: Fucking asshole, glad he’s gone.

Ian: I think there was fucking asshole, but it was because you were in
Hawaii.

Robi: Sipping Mai Tais.

Ian: Not editing the video.

Robi: Be sure to tune in for the next 2 installments of App Developer
Conversations. You can like this on YouTube. Share it with your
friends and subscribe.