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1. Are Apps for the Android Market the Better Bet for App Developers?

   sujata on December 16th, 2009

   Tags: mobile phone, software

   The iPhone is undoubtedly the most significant market for any software company that deals with mobile phone apps. This one product however,has the attention, of every single programmer and software company out there: there are more than a hundred thousand software developers registered with Apple to make apps for the iPhone, who make about as many apps. Imagine that: 100,000 new games, novelties, and functions to choose from, when scrolling through on a 3.5-inch screen. It is enough to drive anyone to distraction, the programmers most of all. Under such circumstances, they see their chances of having their app discovered and hitting it big, fall to negligible. There is also the tortuous app approval process at Apple to contend with; maybe at one time, a year ago, the app store at Apple was the only place that programmers could make money selling applications for mobiles; now that there are other fish in the sea, chiefly phones that run on Google’s Android, and the Blackberry, programmers are wondering why they are standing in line at Apple when they can have their own party elsewhere. They believe the signs look pretty good too: it is estimated that in five years, three-quarters of all mobile phone apps sold will be for phones other than the iPhone.

   Right now, the Android Market looks pretty good; it grew tenfold over the last month in the number of apps offered, and there are a dozen new phones out every month running on Android too. Why, Android phones expected to outsell Blackberries, Windows Mobiles and even the iPhone in a couple of years. And perhaps one of the best parts of the Android Market for a developer is how painless the app approval process is.

   Not that these developments come about without external encouragement. A part of the reason why the iPhone app market is so overrun with developers is, that programming skills for that platform are well-established, as compared to say, programming skills for the Android. But software exists that can help translate a program from one platform to another, software such as Ideaworks Airplay, and suddenly now, making software for other platforms is quite painless.

   The app is the iPhone’s main attraction; and Apple stands to lose market share here to other mobile operating systems. They promise to improve things for developers soon, and if they do, that will be good news all around.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Internet News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.