Who holds the largest mobile OS share? Without a blink, you would know its Droid! Google’s OS has been groundbreaking on many fronts. Its market share, app and user base, developer and manufacturing networks have gone through the roof and stacked up some massive numbers over the years. But then, these numbers aren’t turning inspiring enough for mobile application developers to put their whole faith behindDroid Application Development.No wonder if this makes you think hard on what’s coming in the way of Droid Application Development, given the massive popularity of Google’s flagship OS.
For starters, an interesting scoop appeared in Bloomberg Business week a few days back. A sweeping analysis of the Droid and iPhone platforms came out with the result thatdevelopers made approximately one new Droid app for every three iOS apps during January 2012.
Now that’s down from last year, when there were two Droid apps created for every three iOS apps. This study gains more credence given that parallel researches conducted by independent agencies have shown up similar results. If the pieces of these studies are put together, it comes out that while the iOS remains steady, Droid app development seems to be losing grounds with application makers.
But the question is ‘why’?
“Developers can rake in more out of iPhone application development,” says Rob LaPointe, sales head at Softwaredevelopersindia. “The Apple SDK is simple, quickens iPhone App development, and then finally, when it comes to marketing, the Apple Store cuts it out really well” adds Rob.
Compare this to Droid where fragmentation has been a thorn in the flesh for a long time now. The vast number of Droid devices and the multiple versions of the operating system have made it an uphill task for Droid app developers to test their apps on every device and OS.
Droid devices vary on crucial constituent aspects—such as accelerometers, screen resolution, and pre-installed hardware components. A single device often demands months of work to make an app work on it, and that apparently seems to be making Droid developers less inclined towards Droid app development, as opposed to iPhone application development.
These issues are reflected in the fact that Apple currently has more than 550,000 apps in the App Store, while there are 400,000 in the Google Droid Market. Moreover, there are as many as 90 places where Droid apps are sold compared to the single App Store.
All this however doesn’t totally blunt the edge Droid gives to developers. Being open source, the Droid Native Development Kit (NDK) holds intuitive features which allow developers to work out app development without dealing with any Java.
This is a big, big advantage as professional mobile application developers get to focus at Droid application development, without being thrown into the deep end dealing with issues around the development process.
Of course, its well-know that you don’t need to have deep pockets for Droid applications; it’s one of the greatest advantages associated with open source development. The popularity of the OS also speaks for itself.
