"It really does mean that emerging markets are playing a much more significant role and they have different requirements and they will dictate how things roll out and how developers will think about how and where they make their money." Marcos Sanchez, vice president at App Annie, said the growth of smartphone usage particularly in emerging markets will have a significant impact on the app economy. That also means developers will look at different ways of making money in future.
#Using apple apps on android for android
In emerging markets they are more likely to build for Android first. In the US and Europe developers still tend to build for iOS first as this is where the market momentum is. There's a very real opportunity for us to trip up in front of a broad Android audience giving them and iOS specific user experience," said Rosewarne. "The way in which you navigate is completely different. For iOS we knew the subset of half a dozen devices we'd be building for as opposed to the very wide range of different screen sizes and device types and so on."ĭeveloping for Android and iOS isn't just about the underlying code: the user interface is very different and can cause problems for the unwary as well. The common criticism of Android, which is the fragmentation of the platform, was a contributing factor in our decision. "We found the early stages of getting up and running with iOS was just that little bit simpler.
Those two operating systems rule the world and everything else is a distant third right now."ĭaniel Rosewarne is CTO at Journl, a personal organisation tool, and said his company's decision to build an iOS app first and then build for Android was mostly down to customer demand.īut he said that building for iOS is also easier. Often which operating system programmers choose to develop for first will depend on who they want to use the app, although as Dipesh Mukerji, senior director of product strategy at app maker Kony, points out: "Almost all of them have a plan to build for both. All of this will have implications for how the app store economy evolves over the next few years. If it was previously the case that developers would build for Apple first, that's not always the case now. "To me are the glue that sticks the whole ecosystem together because they offer brands and developers a direct opportunity to connect with their customers." "Apple makes margin mostly by selling hardware, but apps are really what creates the loyalty to the ecosystem, be it from a consumer standpoint or for developers," said Thomas Husson, principal analyst at Forrester. However, the limited revenue that Apple generates from the App Store doesn't imply that it's irrelevant - rather, analysts argue the App Store and the apps inside are an essential element of Apple's offering. That means Apple's cut is somewhere around $10bn - a significant sum but tiny compared to what Apple makes from selling mobile phones: the company reported revenue of nearly $24bn from iPhone sales in its last financial quarter alone.
That might sound like a hefty slice, but developers don't have to pay credit card fees or for hosting, which is covered by Apple.Īpple has paid out $25bn to developers over the last six and a half years. Developers keep 70 percent of the sales of their apps through the App Store, Apple keeps the other 30 percent. "This is the best deal going to distribute applications to mobile platforms," Jobs said when he unveiled the App Store. For developers, access to the iPhone's premium audience is extremely attractive, especially as Apple isn't much interested in making much money off the apps, unlike mobile operators who had been the gatekeepers, deciding how apps were distributed and sold at that point.