Devs Bet Big On Android Over Apple's iOS

CWmike writes "A majority of mobile app developers see Android as the smart bet over the long run even as they vote for Apple's iOS in the short term, according to a survey conducted jointly by Appcelerator and IDC. The survey polled more than 2,300 developers who use Appcelerator's Titanium cross-platform compiler to produce iOS and Android native apps. Of the 2,300 polled, 59% said that Android had the 'best long-term outlook,' compared with just 35% who pegged Apple's iOS with that label. But three out of four said that iOS offers the best 'near-term' outlook, with 76% tagging Apple's operating system as the best revenue opportunity."

Comments

That sounds about right....

[hackel]

Apple users are used to paying for costly proprietary applications, so of course there is a better revenue opportunity. I just find it so disgusting that there are so many developers all of a sudden interested in making money from their code. It seems Apple is doing more to destroy the environment created by the open source community than any other company...

Re:That sounds about right....

[Jonas the Bold]

So in a ideal capitalist society, a person would be encouraged to save everyone a million man-hours because if he made something that useful he'd become rich.

In an idealized communist society, it's to each according to need and from each according to ability, so that person would be encouraged to save everyone a million man hours for no reward, but just because he has the ability.

In your idealized society, you think he should be paid based on... how many hours he worked? Your hybrid economic system removes both the altruistic motive of communism and the reward motive of capitalism.

So you've invented the worst economic system possible. Congrats!

Shared libraries are a big key

[antifoidulus]

The biggest PITA isn't the whole app store process etc. its the fact that developers cannot:
a)You cannot make your own dynamic libraries, only static ones(though the OS obviously supports it, you can include any of Apple's own dyilibs in your project) I don't need to go into why dynamic linking is much better than static....
b)There really isn't a clean way to talk between applications. You can send files, but it's really a drop box, I can COPY(not link!) something into another apps area, but after that the file is no longer mine. So if I want to send something to another app to process and then get it back to do some processing by my application I have to hope the app tells me about the changes, and considering the app may not even know I exist(nor should it, thats the beauty of decoupling), thats a lot to ask.

I can *sort* of understand 1 from a performance standpoint, if you allow user created dynamic libraries every time the application is swapped out of memory you have to find which dynamic libraries it uses, make sure nobody else is using them, then unload them. However as memory increases the rationale behind needing to constantly load/unload them starts to disappear.....

Maybe Apple will change it's tune, but long term I think you will be able to do more interesting things with Android because it allows for the creation of dynamic libraries and inter-application communication.

Re:Sampling bias?

[phantomfive]

Actually I'm pretty surprised they could find 2,300 developers who use Appcelerator's Titanium cross-platform compiler at all. Did they make answering the poll questions a part of installing the software? And does this whole story sound like a slashvertizement to anyone else?

Honestly I like Android, and I like iOS, but the GUI layout models are so different, I can't imagine a single system working well for both. Does anyone have experience with it?

Re:woowoo

[justin12345]

Looking at the title of the summary: "Devs Bet Big On Android Over Apple's iOS"

Then look at the statistics quoted:

Long Term: 59% Android, 35% Apple, and 6% other (undecided, supports both, or neither)

Short Term: 76% Apple

I hardly call that "betting big" on Android. Personally I'll "bet big" that Apple gradually relaxes out of its "walled garden" approach, Google will drift toward higher standards for its market place apps... and ultimately whoever designs (or supports) the shiniest phones will win. Slashdotter's sometimes forget, hardware aesthetics often are the deciding factor.

Re:Not a surprise

[dwater]

...and Meego. Both Symbian and Meego are more open than Android (iinm), because there is no one member controlling it - ie they both have councils/etc.

In comparison, Android is a poor bet, if you ask me. I say this not only because it isn't very open to collaboration, but also because it is designed to profit Google in ways that other key players also want to profit - ie services. Sure, they can fork it and do whatever they want, but that just becomes fragmented and is only Android in name (which might be enough to dumb consumers, I suppose). Manufacturers like that they can see the code, but to changing it means it isn't 'comes with Google'.

Android is "Open" as in "Window", but not "Open" as in "Door".

But I'm sure some would disagree...and I'm quite interested in the counter arguments. So 'fire!'...

Re:woowoo

[Vintermann]

If 100% native apps written in C/C++ (or even Go) were possible, I'd already be developing for android

http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/index.html#overview

Just about the only thing you will need to use the DalvikJava for is integration with the app system. Which you want.