Flurry (http://www.flurry.com), a cross-platform mobile application analytics provider, says a new study shows that Apple’s iOS platform continues to garner more support from developers than Google’s Android operating system.
For every 10 apps that developers build, roughly seven are for iOS. While Google made some gains in Q1 2012, edging up to over 30% for the first time in a year, Flurry says it believes this is largely due to seasonality, as Apple traditionally experiences a spike in developer support leading up to the holiday season. Apple’s business has more observable seasonality.
Among the reasons iOS appears more attractive to developers is the dominance by Apple in the tablet category, according to Flurry. Not only does Apple offer a large, homogenous smartphone base for which to build software, but also when developers build for smartphones, their apps run on Apple’s iPad tablets as well. That’s like getting two platforms for the price of one, says Flurry. Apple offers the most compelling ‘build once, run anywhere’ value proposition in the market today, delivering maximum consumer reach to developers reach for minimal cost.
Opposite to the efficiency Apple offers developers through their homogenous device base, Android fragmentation appears to be increasing, driving up complexity and cost for developers, says Flurry. Further, this fragmentation is concentrated primarily in just smartphones, as there is no serious Android tablet contender to the iPad. For Android, Flurry observes fragmentation along two significant vectors, devices and firmware.