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Some Claim Android App Store Worse Than iPhone's
eldavojohn writes "If you think the iPhone app store is the only mobile game store suffering an exodus, some game publishers claim Android's app store isn't much better, for a different reason — it doesn't generate much revenue. In fact, French game developer Gameloft (which owes 13% of its profits to iPhone game sales), said, 'We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like... many others. It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue. We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android.' So the trade-off seems to be more sales but an annoying approval process, versus a lack of sales promotions and no annoyance around approval. It seems that those in it for money will opt for iPhone, and those in it for distribution will opt for Android. Or maybe someone will get it right one of these days?"
I just recently converted to android. Maybe I'm just late to the game, and we're on the tail end of this exodus now. My first impression, having been on the platform for a week, is that there has been almost no development, especially in making games, for android that is anywhere comparable to the iphone. I would posit that this "exodus" is made up. The market is still nowhere near as developed as the app store. Any discussion about a comparison of the two models is premature at best.
I got a catholic block.
.. at the moment the difference in sales is due to market segmentation based on who is buying each type of phone?
If you are a trendy game player you are buying the iPhone and games for it, but if you are an Android user you care less for games and more about being "free" ??
Actually, there are two big differences between the Android market and the iPhone app store, business wise: there are less Android phones out there than iPhones and iPod Touches and the Android Market does not have paid apps available in every country, including Canada, Sweden, Finland, Mexico, Belgium, Greece, Ireland, South Korea, China, Brazil, India and Russia.
http://blogs.lns.kicks-ass.net/moonjihad/
CNN Tech article on developing for Android: http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/17/android.wired/index.html Will developers get stuck building for the "least common denominator" of 'droid phones? Or develop for specific models / versions / capabilities? Throw in phone vendor and carrier OS customizations and the Android app marketplace could get hard to live with...
Many. These are the countries that currently accept paid apps: http://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=143779
[alk]
Maybe you missed it but it's been a while since developers were allowed to build their own apps without requiring Apple's approval. Yeah there is a cap, but I'm sure 100 copies will fill your need.
Ad Hoc Distribution
The Standard and Enterprise Programs allow you to share your application with up to 100 other iPhone or iPod touch users with Ad Hoc distribution. Share your application through email or by posting it to a web site or server..
Yeah, and I only have to pay $99 for the privilege of being in the "Standard Program" so that I'm allowed to do Ad Hoc distribution.
http://andappstore.com/
they can't effectively take advantage of advanced features or greater available resources in the high end phones, because they'll lose out on all of the potential customers with the lower end models.
The fact that lower-end models exist in no way prevents devs from taking advantage of the advanced features of high end phones. If high-end phones are their target market, so be it, and they can make money from sales to those customers. The API specifies a tag that can be used to restrict installation to devices that contain the features your app requires.
It's real Java. You can use most existing Java libraries. What's different is:
* It uses its own bytecode and its own virtual machine instead of the JVM.
* It uses its own GUI libraries rather than AWT or Swing.
So, you basically need to write your UI from scratch - but otherwise you can reuse any existing Java libraries and source code.
Oh, $99, what a fortune. I mean it's a whopping 15% of the cost of Photoshop CS4! For that you get code signing certificates, which for a Windows Mobile developer only cost $250 from Verisign!
If you cannot afford the $99/year to develop iPhone apps, do something else like searching trashcans for food scraps...