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How Developers Should Choose Between Android and iPhone

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 4:45 PM - by

The Yankee Group has published a report on how developers should elect to choose between the iPhones and Android platforms. The key lies in understanding the ecosystem strategies.

Carl Howe's August 13 report, "How Developers Should Choose Between iPhones and Androids," is aimed at CIOs, IT Mangagers and software developers. In it, he explained that one can expect "Apple to attract more business software developers, while Android will become the favorite platform of phone manufacturers."

Mr. Howe pointed out that Apple's system provides for lower development and distribution costs. "Apple's distribution and promotion through its App Store will dwarf anything most developers could achieve on their own. With lower development costs, better distribution and Kleiner Perkins' $100 million venture fund ready to trade cash for success, money - not features - will drive developers to the iPhone platform, despite Apple's restrictions and a 30% cut of application revenue."

On the other hand, most of the phone-function software developers will focus on Android because Google provides Android under a free open source software license. Mobile phone manufacturers will save money there, but because Android is designed to run on a wide variety of handsets, development and support costs will increase.

"With no centralized distribution or marketing portal, only software developers really wanting to push the envelope on handset design and user interfaces will jump on the Android bandwagon," Mr. Howe noted.

The report, which includes a detailed chart of the technical and business differences between the two platforms, analysis of the different directions of the two platforms and recommendations for mobile phone developers is available from the Yankee Group.

6 comments from the community.

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Tiger said:

member since 17 Jun 2003 with 1013 posts, unranked, send him a message or view his profile

Wed Aug 20, 2008 4:58 pm

That's easy. Go with the one that says it's a phone, not a robot with artificial intelligence.

Dumb choice of names. It's gonna become the Hand 'roid.

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A guest said: (hide)

Wed Aug 20, 2008 9:58 pm

For a DEVELOPER, having lower development, distribution, and support costs makes the iPhone the winner over Android. Development, distribution, and support are the three biggest costs of creating software. The iPhone makes it so easy, its child's play. Imagine the nightmare of having to support several different form factors and hardware when developing for Android. It is like developing for numerous Linux distrubutions, not just one. It would be easier it if was like Ubuntu on an Intel platform. But no. Android will be on several CPUs and many forms. It will be worse than having to support Windows Mobile.

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A guest said: (hide)

Wed Aug 20, 2008 10:15 pm

What a dumb article. Android isn't really competing against the iPhone. Google's motive with Android is to displace any chance Microsoft has of gaining a foot hold in the Mobile phone market. Google wants to maintain it's advertising market, which it fears Microsoft will displace if it gets a hold on the phone. Handset manufacturers will find Android attractive because 1) it takes care of being under Microsoft's thumb in terms of licensing costs, and two they can customize the OS to fit their handsets. Again, Google is aiming for Microsoft. After-all Apple doesn't license OSX.

As far as developers go. Developers don't need to choose. Right now there are no Android phones on the market. If and when a market appears, developers most likely will develop for both if it makes sense. Since, the iPhone is a closed market, it however, will likely be more attrative to developers. They don't have to worry about different phone models and variants of the Android OS.

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A guest said: (hide)

Thu Aug 21, 2008 12:01 am

other phones will have a commodity OS in Android and will run it on commodity hardware and will be competing against each other with same product for most part

meanwhile Apple will have its own propriety hardware with tighter OS integration to differentiate itself even further and faster.

Same formula worked for iPod, is currently working on iPhone, and will continue to work

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A guest said: (hide)

Thu Aug 21, 2008 3:34 am

Yankee group? Isn't that Maureen O' Gara's outfit? The one that repeated for years and years and years SCO's claims, about how IBM stole all of SCO's valuable code and put it into Linux, and all Linux users are thieves and have to pay $699 per Linux license to SCO?

And this very Yankee group is trying to tell developers what platform to develop for? I couldn't possibly believe anything that comes from the Yankee group.

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A guest said: (hide)

Thu Aug 21, 2008 8:24 am

Tiger wrote:
That's easy. Go with the one that says it's a phone, not a robot with artificial intelligence.

Dumb choice of names. It's gonna become the Hand 'roid.

If the Android interface is anything like Gmail on the web or google apps, it will be snapped up by 4-eyed propeller egg heads, not by normal humans, hence the

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