So you’re a mobile developer and you want to start building apps for the glory, the fame, and the cold, hard cash.  You’re probably looking at the iPhone vs. Android war unless you were just recently thawed out from cryogenic storage, in which case I welcome you to the 21st century.

As a mobile development platform, the iPhone might as well rename itself to “Lightning Rod for Criticism.”  The critiques are not undeserved–largely due to its App Store, but the platform itself has a fair number of things to gripe about too.  Google “iPhone App Development Sucks” and you’ll find lots of complaints usually distilled down to:

1. Getting approved requires intervention by the Pope or some higher deity.  Rejections are potentially random.
2. Approval times are so long, users get mad because bug fixes take a long time to migrate into the ecosystem.
3. The vast majority of apps in the store are ignored because they are swimming in a sea of competition.
4. Apple is just plain mean and kicked my dog for amusement.

Maybe not the fourth one as much as the first three, but they’re all around in various proportions.  They usually result in the following solutions:

• Apple should change the app approval process.
• Apple should remove its stranglehold on the iPhone app store.
• Developers should get the new <insert Android-based phone here> because Android’s platform has:
  1. No problematic approval process
  2. Greater opportunity
  3. Lower competition
  4. The hot new market
  5. Better development environment

My question to the mobile development community is the grass really greener on the Android side of the fence? Let’s take a hard look:

The Android Marketplace

I have a few friends with the Droid/Android phone sets and they love to brag about just how cool they are compared to the iPhone.  I’ve seen the handset and played with it for a bit.  It’s nice enough for sure.  But when I ask them about the Android App Store, instead of telling me about Android, they rail on how broken the Apple App store is.  That missed the point.  I wanted to know how theirs works.  So finally, I checked it out for myself…

There are no less than SEVEN different stores (that I can find to date, Jan ‘10), either already available or in the works, including:

• Android Marketplace
• Motorola Shop4Apps (accidentally discovered back in December, 2009)
• Handango
• Mobihand
• MiKandi (the first adult app store, and no I’m not linking to it.  )
• General Mobile and
• Sony Ericsson (both mentioned here, coming soon to a browser near you)

This is progress?  Now instead of contending with ONE process, ONE registration fee, and potentially, ONE set of handset, I’m faced with a nightmare combinatorial problem of up to seven places to deal with as a developer (with seven fees, seven policies, seven places to potentially get rejected if they dislike something, etc), and SEVEN places to shop as a consumer.  As a developer (especially a micro ISV), my resources were already strapped but now they’re positively spread razor thin in this model.

Oh, but wait!  I want to stick with the MAIN store, because they clearly won’t all win, right?  You might guess that Google’s will win, but are you really 100% sure about that?  What if the Google Phone continues to have lackluster sales like it did in the first week?

Flurry Stats for First Week Sales

Not looking good there for Google, is it?  Yeah, so you’re going to hedge your bets, submit to multiple stores and reach for some aspirin.  So #1 on our list isn’t looking great.

Android Opportunity

The number one reason most (but not all) developers create mobile apps is to get some economic benefit.  How does Android stack up in terms of economic potential?

Apple and Android stores couldn’t be more different in size:   Apple’s app store is estimated to make $2.4  Billion dollars per year (source:  AdMob).  For some perspective, that’s about the 2008 GDP of Somalia and about 2x the 2008 GDP of the Maldives.  Official Android figures have yet to come out, but AdMob has estimated their size at about $60 Million dollars per year, as of about 6 months ago.  For the mathematically challenged, that makes Android’s Marketplace about 2% of the size of Apple’s iTunes economy, or Apple’s iTunes economy is about 40x larger than Android’s.

And as if that weren’t depressing enough, the Android Market’s purchase rate is less than half that of the iTunes App Store (19% of Android users bought apps vs. 50% of Apple users).  There’s some speculation that Android users have a higher ability to pirate purchased apps, and this is impacting the actual purchase rates.  Either way, the fact that the Android user base is less likely to buy apps coupled with the size difference makes the economic benefit of the platform shaky at best.

That makes #2 as a reason to switch somewhat naive.

App Store Competition

Is the market situation better with Android’s Marketplace because of lower competition?  Here’s one developer’s experience with Android vs. iPhone markets. My favorite is their quote:

A good example is the well known game Trism, which sold over $250,000 in it’s first two months on the iPhone. On Android it has sold, to date (August 2009), less than 500 copies. That’s $1,046 total earnings, max. How psyched are those guys that they ported a huge hit to Android and can’t even cover a party sub for the release dinner?

Ouch.  And if a well known title is struggling like that, what does that say about the lesser known apps?

Internal competition is a good thing–competition means that everyone thinks this platform is interesting.  Android doesn’t seem to have critical mass here.  Unfortunately, Android has external competition, but not in a good way.  If you want to get the best deal on apps, you actually need to shop and price-compare apps between stores–how’s that for a great experience?

We noticed that the MobiHand store features some apps that were also found on Handango’s site, like the GoogHelper app and the FotMob app, for example. However, on OnlyAndroid, GoogHelper was $3.95 whereas Handango sold it for $4.95. FotMob, on the other hand, was free on Handango but was $7.99 on OnlyAndroid.

I think we can scratch #3 as a good reason.

Android Market:  Hot or Not?

Android has the buzz, but Android’s market share just doesn’t touch Apple’s, either in terms of payout or number of handsets available.  Here are figures from Quantcast for Oct/Nov in 2009 comparison charts (This is the most recent data available for this post, I’d love to see how Dec changed this, if at all, with the release of the Motorola Droid).

October 2009, Ad Mob OS breakdown

Nov 2009, Ad Mob OS breakdown

Notice two things:

1. Android’s jump in market share was at the expense of RIM, Windows Mobile and other non-Apple OSes.
2. Apple’s market share remained untouched.

So why does Apple maintain such a captive audience?  They understand that a mobile device should be

1. Beautiful.
2. Useful.
3. Usable.

The iPhone is the first mobile device to accurately capture that trifecta of characteristics.  A positive user experience will trump “open platforms” and all that other developer-centric nonsense that we like to spout.  Android merely copied most of what the iPhone had already innovated, but without adding much to its predecessor’s heritage.  As an iPhone user, my motive to switch platforms is low.  Android’s market share will stagnate soon for that reason alone.

What about the Android Marketplace vs. iTunes?  iTunes is a case study in user friendliness.  The Android Marketplace is functional but a real pain to navigate.  Try this fun experiment:  Browse the Top Paid Apps in the Android Marketplace.  You have to hover over each app to find out what it does and each page contains 8 apps.  You can’t see how much an app costs until you visit the developer’s own site.  Apple, by contrast, puts some minimal info on each app including publisher and price for each app and I can see up to 100 at a time.

Developers, Developers, Developers!

The Android’s development platform is a clear win for software nerds.  Developing an Android app means using Java, a well-known, well-documented language with loads of great tools and relative ease of uploading them to the device.  Apple’s XCode is a piece of crap, even on a good day.  Provisioning your iPhone app is a small nightmare that even the most seasoned of developers will struggle with.

Finally, a point for Android!  But unfortunately, developer friendliness is the least important aspect of the platform.  Not just Android, any platform.

Steve Jobs Is Still Pwning Android

Let’s recap thus far:  With Apple, you have a painful setup process, a lousy development environment , a costly annual fee, and a single app store that if you’re part of the Blessed, you can make some fat cash, hand over fist.

With Android, you have seven potential stores to deal with, a reasonable development environment, a lot of uncertainty about the market, and no economic incentive to make apps because the payout isn’t working out like Apple’s app store.

I wouldn’t call that much of an incentive to go with anything but Apple, even with all the negatives in Apple’s basket.

The iPhone scratched an itch no one knew they had and the Apple App Store took off into the stratosphere, inspired by a paranoid and sometimes irrational father figure culture.  And it’s still kicking the crap out of everything else.  Android’s game of catch-up is turning into a potential nightmare for customers and developers alike.

My advice is to buy a black turtleneck, some khakis and buck up with your iPhone development.  Cocoa may be a pain and Objective-C far less fun than Java, but Android’s cure is worse than the disease.

UPDATE:  Six weeks later, the Nexus One launch is declared a flop.  Sales are 10% of either Droid or iPhone during the same 74 day period of their launch cycle.  Not exactly the iPhone killer Google was hoping for.

Related posts:

1. Google’s Go Isn’t Getting Us Anywhere, Part 1
2. Google’s Go Isn’t Getting Us Anywhere, Part 2

Adobe took a big step forward using swfobject.js to handle swf embedding in Flex 4’s index.template.html, but in my opinion they didn’t go quite far enough.

Here are my changes:

1. Short and sweet, so I can understand what the hell is going on.
2. Use Google AJAX Libraries API to include swfobject.js.
3. No IE6 crap.
4. No Browser History crap.

Here’s my current version:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>${application}</title>
 
<style type="text/css" media="screen">
html, body, #flashcontent { height:${height}; }
body { margin:0; padding:0; overflow:hidden; }
</style>
 
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/swfobject/2.2/swfobject.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
swfobject.embedSWF(
    '${swf}.swf',
    'flashcontent',
    '${width}', '${height}',
    '${version_major}.${version_minor}.${version_revision}',
    '${expressInstallSwf}',
    false,
    { 'bgColor':'${bgcolor}' });
</script>
</head>
 
<body>
<div id="flashcontent">
Flash is required.  <a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer">Get it here!</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Flashvars

Using flashvars is easy with SWFObject (see the embedSWF() method in the docs), just put them in as a Javascript hash like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
swfobject.embedSWF(
    '${swf}.swf',
    'flashcontent',
    '${width}', '${height}',
    '${version_major}.${version_minor}.${version_revision}',
    '${expressInstallSwf}',
    { key1:'val1', key2:'val2', key3:'val3' },
    { 'bgColor':'${bgcolor}' });
</script>

View Source

Lastly, here’s a little trick that I use to embed flash into a post on this blog (or anywhere else) that enables view source to work with a relative url, so I can leave the viewSourceURL attribute alone (defaults to viewSourceURL="srcview/index.html").

<script type="text/javascript">
swfobject.embedSWF(
    '${swf}.swf',
    'flashcontent',
    '${width}', '${height}',
    '${version_major}.${version_minor}.${version_revision}',
    '${expressInstallSwf}',
    false,
    { 'bgColor':'${bgcolor}', base:'.' });
</script>

Adding the base parameter, and setting it to '.', tells the embedded SWF to lookup urls relative to itself. The net effect is that view source just works.

Files

• index.template.html

"'And when Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.' Benefits of a classical education." - Hans Gruber

• Build a product - Whether it is an Open Source application, shareware, or a commercial application, build something from scratch that other people will use. Interact with your user base and understand the challenges that product managers face.
• Manage a team - Lead a team. Learn the interpersonal skills necessary to manage a team, and learn the leadership skills and qualities necessary to rally a disparate group of individuals into a team.
• Work for a startup - As a side project or part of your career path, understand how a small company can often achieve more than a much larger firm.
• Work for a Fortune 500 Company - In a consulting role or as an employee, understand how the right decision for an organization isn't always the right decision for an individual team or group, and the political and interpersonal issues that this can create.
• Learn - Learn a new language every year, at least. Learn a new framework, pattern or approach ever quarter, at least. Understand how things work on the other side of the fence, you'll be amazed at how it can change your perspective.
• Mentor - Learn to help others grow. If you can't teach someone else how to do it, you probably don't understand it well yourself.
• Build your Network - It is a small world. You will run into folks again and again. The impression you make on them as a junior developer may be important a decade later.
  
• Maintain your Network - Keep in touch with as many people as you can. Reach out to them and help them as much as possible. It will pay off.
  

<repositories>
  <repository>
    <id>Java.net</id>
    <name>Java.net Repository</name>
    <url>http://download.java.net/maven/2/</url>
  </repository>
</repositories>

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.graniteds</groupId>
  <artifactId>granite-core</artifactId>
  <version>2.0.0.GA</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.graniteds</groupId>
  <artifactId>granite-spring</artifactId>
  <version>2.0.0.GA</version>
</dependency>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<services-config>

  <services>
    <service
        id="granite-service"
        class="flex.messaging.services.RemotingService"
        messageTypes="flex.messaging.messages.RemotingMessage">
      <destination id="test">
        <channels>
          <channel ref="my-graniteamf"/>
        </channels>
        <properties>
          <factory>springFactory</factory>
          <source>[beanName]</source>
        </properties>
      </destination>
    </service>
  </services>

  <factories>
    <factory id="springFactory"
             class="org.granite.spring.SpringServiceFactory"/>
  </factories>

  <channels>
    <channel-definition id="my-graniteamf" class="mx.messaging.channels.AMFChannel">
      <endpoint
          uri="http://{server.name}:{server.port}/{context.root}/graniteamf/amf"
          class="flex.messaging.endpoints.AMFEndpoint"/>
    </channel-definition>
  </channels>

</services-config>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE granite-config PUBLIC
    "-//Granite Data Services//DTD granite-config internal//EN"
    "http://www.graniteds.org/public/dtd/1.2.0/granite-config.dtd">

  <granite-config scan="true">
</granite-config>

<context-param>
  <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
  <param-value>
    /WEB-INF/config/web-application-config.xml
  </param-value>
</context-param>

<listener>
  <listener-class>
    org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
  </listener-class>
</listener>

<filter>
  <filter-name>AMFMessageFilter</filter-name>
  <filter-class>
    org.granite.messaging.webapp.AMFMessageFilter
  </filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
  <filter-name>AMFMessageFilter</filter-name>
  <url-pattern>/graniteamf/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>

<servlet>
  <servlet-name>AMFMessageServlet</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>
    org.granite.messaging.webapp.AMFMessageServlet
  </servlet-class>
  <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
  <servlet-name>AMFMessageServlet</servlet-name>
  <url-pattern>/graniteamf/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>