Mobile-app developers are gearing up for an Android push next year, with the rise of Google's mobile operating system likely to push iPhone app-development activity into second place behind the Mountain View juggernaut. According to a survey released Thursday by mobile-ad firm Millennial Media, developed in conjuntion with the …

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Thursday 4th November 2010 20:55 GMT ThomH

Planned for though, surely?

Apple can't have thought they'd be ahead forever, given that their sales are up 95% year-on-year, they're unable to meet demand and they're still less than 4% of the total mobile phone market. Is it possible that the iPhone is here to stay but more like the Mac (ie, a highly profitable niche) rather than an iPod (ie, the dominant player)? Or maybe Apple are just focussed purely on new products from now on? Launch the iPhone, dominate the market for four years, launch the iPad, hopefully dominate that market for a few more years, etc?

Android has done incredibly well, especially given the logistics involved, and Google should be applauded. The OS may not be as open as some people would like (in the sense of being able to contribute to it, being able to put it on any device with all the Google apps and the marketplace) but it's easy to fork if Google ever become an actual problem.

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1. Friday 5th November 2010 10:29 GMT Tigra 07
  
  apples sinking
  
  It seems apple is churning out new or redesigned products every few years, living off the massive revenue they generate for a few years, and then sinking in sales when competitors get released with better software, hardware, pricing etc.
  
  mac - beaten by Windows massive global coverage and kinda competing against the ipad.
  
  iphone - possibly beaten by Windows phone7 and Android very soon.
  
  ipad - hard to tell at the moment, christmas should give interesting view here.
  
  ipod - undoubtably won mp3 player war but was made kinda obsolete by ipod.
  
  History really does repeat itself
  
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  1. Friday 5th November 2010 14:38 GMT Anonymous Coward
    
    re: apples sinking
    
    “It seems apple is churning out new or redesigned products every few years, living off the massive revenue they generate for a few years, and then sinking in sales when competitors get released with better software, hardware, pricing etc.”
    
    Do you have ANY evidence to support this? Sales may fluctuate, but I think for the last ten years, quarterly profits have been up each time compared to the previous year.
    
    "mac - beaten by Windows massive global coverage and kinda competing against the ipad."
    
    Although globally, Apple's share of the market has been slowly decreasing, the most recent figures for the States show it's up (just under 11.5%) - but I don't think anyone seriously thinks that Apple's business model is dominating the OS market.
    
    What evidence is there to support iPads cannabalizing Mac sales?
    
    "iphone - possibly beaten by Windows phone7 and Android very soon."
    
    Possibly beaten? And you're basing this on?
    
    In terms of units sold, Apple doesn’t dominate the smartphone market. *However* it has the lion’s share of the profits in this market– last year, it was 32% (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10303733-37.html).
    
    Since then this is going up (http://www.intomobile.com/2010/07/22/apple-iphone-has-totally-dominated-the-smartphone-market/) and up (http://www.wctv.tv/news/headlines/IPhone_4_of_Market_50_of_Profit_106386399.html).
    
    These latest figures show that Apple has 4% of the smartphone market but 50% for the profits of the entire industry. So far all analysts have said this ain’t about to fall.
    
    “ipad - hard to tell at the moment, christmas should give interesting view here.”
    
    Although it will be interesting to see how well rival offerings do, tablet sales are up 25% currently, the iPad has 95% of the market and about 7.5 million iPads have been sold now, so I don’t think it’s that difficult to take a wild guess at how that’s been doing so far.
    
    “ipod - undoubtably won mp3 player war but was made kinda obsolete by ipod.”
    
    Eh?
    
    “History really does repeat itself”
    
    As do people who don’t know what they’re talking about…
    
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    1. Friday 5th November 2010 15:09 GMT Tigra 07
      
      RE: AC
      
      Maybe you should actually read the article again as you cleary haven't already.
      
      You pick fault with every point i made, then say i have no evidence and don't provide any to back up your point either.
      
      You're a fanboy troll plain and simple, but i will expand on this a bit anyway.
      
      Ipads and macs are both overpriced and not too many people will have both, they will make a choice between the two.
      
      iphone share is falling while android is rising WORLDWIDE, i'm not bothered about America on this because that has no bearing at all on global market share.
      
      Again that's market share, not profit this time as you didn't get that last time.
      
      Ipods are iphones without the ability to make calls
      
      "As do people who don’t know what they’re talking about" Right, look at what you wrote again and actually read the article, and by that i mean look at the charts aswell
      
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      1. Monday 8th November 2010 12:28 GMT Anonymous Coward
        
        Yup
        
        "You pick fault with every point i made, then say i have no evidence and don't provide any to back up your point either."
        
        I did indeed - because you made sweeping statements and seem to overlook some important points, such as when loking at how well a company is doing in a market, just looking at units shifted doesn't tell the whole story.
        
        "You pick fault with every point i made, then say i have no evidence and don't provide any to back up your point either."
        
        That's right, I provided some facts and figures with URLS to back them up....
        
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Thursday 4th November 2010 20:55 GMT Tom Chiverton 1

Nokia fail

No mention of Meego at all. Shame...

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Thursday 4th November 2010 20:55 GMT Anonymous Coward

Obviously iPhone development has peaked

All the fart apps have been written and all the good names have been taken.

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1. Friday 5th November 2010 16:45 GMT Adam Foxton
  
  "all the good names have been taken..."
  
  ...by Apple. Then copyrighted to the eyeballs.
  
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Thursday 4th November 2010 20:55 GMT Anonymous Coward

Spock was right

It was inevitable my poor Apple fanbois. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

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Thursday 4th November 2010 20:55 GMT Hud Dunlap

Get rid of AT&T

Apples biggest problem right now is AT&T. The service is terrible and they always seem to come up with oddball fees that they don't tell you about. I upgraded from an iPhone 3 to an iPhone 4 and on my bill was an upgrade fee. No one mentioned this and they won't take it off. And don't try surfing the web at lunch. You can almost graph how many people are getting out for lunch by how badly the connection slows down.

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Thursday 4th November 2010 20:55 GMT Anakin

What about MeeGo?

I know many developers are going to develop for Nokia N900 and other MeeGo devices.

But the answer always depend of what you ask.

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1. Thursday 4th November 2010 23:34 GMT justaview
  
  Monopoly or fragmented user base?
  
  Is this having to write for each device worse than the MS monopoly we are escaping from?
  
  I think probably not but it is still painful, just in a different way.
  
  I wonder what will happen when we have 3 or 4 major mobile OS to write for. A standard app framework?
  
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  1. Friday 5th November 2010 11:56 GMT Ian Yates
    
    Framework
    
    I've looked at a few frameworks that abstract the mobile platform, in theory allowing for iPhone/iPad, Android, Meego, etc., delivery with just a few compiler flags.
    
    Unfortunately, Jobs' antipathy towards API abstraction and non-ObjC development means that iPhone/iPad support could disappear at any time... making it less attractive in that respect.
    
    It'll be interesting to see how that plays out for them. I (as a developer) am not going to buy a Mac just to develop for one platform, representing a share (although significant) of the mobile market; I'm also not going to pay their developer tax if they're just going to arbitrarily block my apps from release without much explanation or chance of appeal.
    
    I use Android but I do think Google need to drastically overhaul the Market (Gingerbread?) and provide a web-based alternative for browsing/purchasing.
    
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Thursday 4th November 2010 23:34 GMT Jeff 11

Seriously?

"developers said that 29 per cent of their new-platform efforts would be devoted to Android devices"

Well unless I'm reading this one, that's because most app developers are already tied to the Apple app store. So of course there's going to be more *new-platform* development on Android because it's just about capable of running stuff that's been on the iPhone for 2 years, but it doesn't mean a market shift towards Android devices. And Apple devs aren't going to abandon their iOS revenue because they

And I have serious doubts about the ability to run GPU-accelerated apps on the vast majority of Android devices, because almost every handset lacks dedicated hardware acceleration. Even my HTC Desire, nice as it is, can't even run the HTC Sense UI smoothly. The fragmented nature of device capabilities is going to be a serious barrier when it comes to app UX, which is where Apple's platforms beat Android hands down. I wish it well, but it'll be many years, not one, before the Android platform can compete with Apple.

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1. Friday 5th November 2010 05:41 GMT Stephen Bungay
  
  Yes seriously.
  
  Like the those at h/p who thought that Woz's computer would never catch on, the execs at Xerox in the '70s who gave away the modern GUI to Woz and Jobs, and the agents who turned down acts like the Beatles, if you think the Android is not going to be hugely successful then you are mistaken.
  
  With any tablet or mobile device the hardware part has been easy to do for a couple of years now, what was missing was the software to run it and the leadership to make it in the right form-factor and promote it. Kudos to Mr. Jobs and Company on that score. As is the norm for him he didn't follow the herd and make his tablet yet another laptop with a rotating screen and stylus. He made it a tablet, more in the vein of Star-Trek meets Minority Report... and the world instinctively knew it was "right".
  
  Now that the masses know what they want (the form-factor), as long as the losers (and Apple is not among them) don't screw it up, the iOS devices and Android devices will compete and the world will have products that just keep improving. I do not think Apple and Google, unlike another company which enjoyed zero competition, will rest on their laurels, .
  
  As it is now the Android UX is very good, even if some apps don't make good use of it. Couple that with a greater opportunity to create for the Android platform (you don't need to buy a Mac to develop for it) and you have a huge talent base on which to draw. This is going to be fun!
  
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2. Friday 5th November 2010 10:45 GMT pan2008
  
  WP7?
  
  It wouldn't happen if your HTC was running WP7.
  
  0 1
3. Friday 5th November 2010 11:56 GMT MarkOne
  
  Utter BS
  
  if you are a real developer, then you should be ashamed at your lack of technical knowledge of Android handsets.
  
  Almost ALL android handsets have a dedicated GPU. The Desire, the Legend (which benchmarks even faster than the Desire), all the Samsungs and Motorolas.
  
  Any handset made in the last 18months or so will have a dedicated GPU.
  
  As for our Android development, we are making SUBSTANTIALLY more money from Android apps than iOS at the moment. It's gone ballistic over the last 6 months.
  
  You can check out Mobile benchmarks here, rather relying on some Apple funded FUD.
  
  http://bit.ly/btv71L
  
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4. Friday 5th November 2010 11:56 GMT Tigra 07
  
  RE: Jeff 11
  
  "So of course there's going to be more *new-platform* development on Android because it's just about capable of running stuff that's been on the iPhone for 2 years"
  
  You present a very biased argument Fanboy as many Androids have superior hardware to even the new iphone 4, including my X10.
  
  Besides that, the majority of androids are cheaper than the iphone and so will catch a massive market for people who don't want to waste that much on a phone, don't like apple or don't want a smartphone or contract phone.
  
  Like most people over 30 for example, still a huge market.
  
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Thursday 4th November 2010 23:38 GMT Anonymous Coward

So iPad isn't iOS?

Why have the iPhone and iPad been separated out? Is it to make Android look better?

Not trying to make a pro Apple statement here just a WTF for the stats.

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1. Friday 5th November 2010 05:25 GMT Daniel B.
  
  Different horses...
  
  I also looked at that graph with suspicion... but there is a point with separating iPhone and iPad. the iPhone is, well, a phone, so there are some iPhone apps that wouldn't make sense on an iPad. Similarly, big-screen iPad apps wouldn't make sense on the iPhone/iTouch.
  
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2. Friday 5th November 2010 10:40 GMT Tigra 07
  
  RE: AC
  
  If you think that's unfair, it is.
  
  The person who did the graph left out the Android pads, which are already on the market.
  
  So ipad shouldn't even be on there in all fairness because all the other OS on there don't have tablets out yet.
  
  Massive fail to whoever asked the developers those questions and biased it in favour of apple
  
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  1. Friday 5th November 2010 11:58 GMT Sean O'Connor 1
    
    Agreed
    
    > Why have the iPhone and iPad been separated out? Is it to make Android look better?
    
    That's the first thing that caught my eye too. As an iPhone developer it's pretty trivial to make a Universal app which runs on both devices (mostly just click Project | Upgrade Current Target for iPad...). I'm just about to universal-ify my latest game. It's 11am. I'll be done by lunch.
    
    They might as well have separated iPhone 3s and 4s as we've got to redraw all the graphics and icons at double the size for the retina display. Takes longer to do that than make the app universal.
    
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Friday 5th November 2010 10:28 GMT damian Kelly

Going the way of the Macintosh.....

As I have said before Apple will introduce the premium and market braking product. Initially rapidly gaining market share before the products become commodities. At this point cost becomes more important and Apple will retreat to quality/integration niche.

Fine as long as they know this is happening and innovate new products......

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Friday 5th November 2010 10:31 GMT Rogerborg

We'll ALL get rich!

If we write a hundred Irate Avians clones, why, that will surely generate a hundred times the revenue of one app!

Someone needs to tell these spackers that if their app isn't sitting in the top three in its category now, then they're already too late to the party.

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Friday 5th November 2010 11:56 GMT Anonymous Coward

I dunno about anyone else...

...but XCode/OSX make me want to stab myself in the eye with a pen, repeatedly. Whereas Eclipse actually does what I expect of it. Pretty much everything is harder in the iOS dev environment, and it's got little to do with simple language differences.

I don't want to use a sodding Mac to write code.

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Friday 5th November 2010 11:58 GMT The Grump

Oh, please !

I love the glowing comments about the Droid - speken like someone who has never owned one. Well, I own a Moto Droid, and it SUCKS.

The apps are $hitty - they work nowhere near as well as MS apps, especially their useless "notepad" app. Their satvav app sent me in an infinite circle in a cul-de-sac housing development (I saw the same dog walker 3 times before I realized I was going in circles). The browser doesn't do flash or shockwave, and many links, when selected, are simply ignored. The calc app doesn't have a percent function (the only calc on the planet that doesn't). The photo gallery thumbnails every photo in the gallery at the same time, no matter how many folders the pics are stored in. This causes the Droid to slow to a crawl before the app is forced closed. This limits how many photos can be stored on the Droid, despite the room available on a 32 GB memory chip. And photo gallery has two zoom levels - normal size and HUGE. Nothing in between. (Major fails).

The phone itself? The battery cover falls off all the time, the ringer volume control is right where you hold the phone, causing the ringer volume to mute unexpectedly. The camera resolution is crap - I did far better with a cheap, dedicated camera.

So don't tell ME how great the Droid is - I know better. And I'm stuck with this loser of a phone for another year, until my contract runs out. Then I'm buying a MS based OS phone, and Google can kiss my big behind.

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1. Friday 5th November 2010 14:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
  
  Oh please indeed!
  
  @ The Grump
  
  I looked at the Motorola (the Milestone) and found the screen scrolling a bit jerky, although I loved the form factor (slide out keyboard) which leaves more screen real estate, and the device appeared well constructed otherwise. I do own an Android based phone though, the nexus one, and I have the complete opposite experience you have with the your Motorola;
  
  nexus one
  
  * The battery cover does not fall off (it is actually a little difficult to get off (which is good))
  
  * Photo Zoom is two finger pinch scalable, not just normal and huge.
  
  * Ringer volume control is where I expect it to be.
  
  * The camera is 5 Mega Pixels, half as many as my dedicated Canon Eos SLR. (pretty good).
  
  Applications (Android 2.2)
  
  * The satnav app works as well as my dedicated satnav.
  
  * The browser DOES do flash
  
  * The default calculator app does NOT have a percent function (so multiply by a decimal value).
  
  * The photo gallery DOES show every photo in the gallery.
  
  Regarding being locked into a contract... you got screwed by being penny-wise and pound foolish, lured in by the low-cost of the phone, forgetting the long-term cost of the contract. Perhaps you should (now, before your contract runs out) buy an unlocked phone (it does not matter if it is MS, Apple, or Android). Shop around (you have time) and get something you really like. Put your sim card in it (if your carrier uses sim cards) and see if it is what you want and if it works the way you like things to work. Do this BEFORE you lay out the cash.
  
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Friday 5th November 2010 12:03 GMT lucmars

But who wants app ?

An other survey said that nobody gave a flip about mobile app, so what is the point ?

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