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I'm giving up on upgrading my apps for Android. The releases are dividing the market every single year and consequently steadily eroding sales. On the one hand

I'm giving up on upgrading my apps for Android. The releases are dividing the market every single year and consequently steadily eroding sales. On the one hand Google's Nexus was released 3 years ago and is now obsolete; on the other hand Apple's iPhone 5s was released 5 years ago and gets to run iOS 12. On top of this, the vast majority of my paying customers use iOS, not Android (a variety of lifestyle and reference apps). This is disappointing; I can't financially justify further development for Android. Oreo, released in 2017, is at a pitiful 12% installation share. [1] [1] https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/ https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/

jdc 8y ago
Why not use an older API version?
- izacus 8y ago
  Since this year you won't be allowed to do that anymore - since backwards compatibility behaviour allowed app developers to avoid privacy protecting features like runtime permissions.
  - skybrian 8y ago
    I'm not an Android developer but they say supporting older versions should still work: "Existing apps that are not receiving updates are unaffected. Developers remain free to use a minSdkVersion of their choice, so there is no change to your ability to build apps for older Android versions." [1] https://developer.android.com/distribute/best-practices/develop/target-sdk https://developer.android.com/distribute/best-practices/deve...
    - fmorel 8y ago
      Yes, you can still support older versions. But the app must target at least Oreo, which means supporting the new permission model on newer versions of Android while making use of unfettered access on older versions.
      - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
        Nothing prohibits backporting Cyanogen/Lineage permission controls to previous releases.
    - j16sdiz 8y ago
      Not if you want to be listed on play store > As we announced last year, Google Play will require all app updates to target Android Oreo (targetSdkVersion 26 or higher) by November 2018. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/08/introducing-android-9-pie.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/08/introducin...
      - distances 8y ago
        Target sdk is different from min sdk. The feature set you can use depends on min sdk.
willtim 8y ago
They stopped selling the premium "Pixel C" tablet about 6 months ago and that is now obsolete (no Android 9).
izacus 8y ago
The only way you get only 12% installation share on Oreo is if you're targeting Indian continent with Hindi localisation. For a western world targeted app, the stats are around 35-40% for Oreo right now. So you seem to be deliberately ignoring your own installation stats just to complain - the dashboard you're posted is pretty much not relevant for anyone but multi-million installation apps like Facebook. In other words, if you ignore Oreo users, you're ignoring more (wealthy) people than there are owners of iPhone X. Also I simply fail to see how releases are dividing the market, considering the fact that for most apps new releases don't really require nearly as much maintenance as they do for new iOS releses. Granted, Oreo and P require a bit of work for apps that run in the background, but vast majority of the apps will just work if they implemented proper privacy respecting permissions since the release of 6.0 in 2015. Just to be clear - I don't mind if you give up Android development (good riddance actually, way too much toxic people in the community), but PLEASE do not spread misinformation.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  > but PLEASE do not spread misinformation. The data they quoted is official from Google themselves. You've provided no data source by contrast, just anecdotes. > good riddance actually, way too much toxic people in the community They're "toxic" because they're raising the cost of doing business in the ecosystem as a limiting factor? That's quite a stretch.
- knuththetruth 8y ago
  Conflating a very real and common concern (fragmentation in the android market) with “toxicity” seems a bit excessive.
  - izacus 8y ago
    The OP wrote a post which has nothing to do with article at hand and is deliberately misleading. I think the term is fitting - it's complaining for complaining's sake. And that's toxic in a community. Compare it with the frontend developers - dealing with Android fragmentation is signficantly easier than dealing with browser and device fragmentation as a web developer... and those topics aren't full of people complaining.
otachack 8y ago
What are you upgrading? Usually it's just a matter of changing a couple numbers in the Gradle file. The only headache with new SDKs are if you're trying to integrate new features that aren't in appcompat but even then it's straight forward to support.
- ilove_banh_mi 8y ago
  Mainly notifications and speech.
- 0x0 8y ago
  There's been tons of subtle and not so subtle breaking changes from bumping targetSdkVersion, many that only manifests at runtime. Things like runtime-permission-grants, three iterations of C2DM, GCM, FCM, notification handling, inner classes in activities and fragments, background processing, NDK changes, etc etc. If you have a low-churn legacy but still useful app, coming back every year and between the subtle api changes (which require runtime testing on old and new android devices) combined with an ever-reorganized google api console and play store console and firebase console is quite an effort. But I guess that's the cost of playing in the play store and for progress in the mobile OS landscape.
  - j16sdiz 8y ago
    GCM is being removed by google. You have to migrate to FCM anyway. This is unrelated to the targetSdkVersion.
    - oakesm9 8y ago
      And it's a very small change on the app side to make the switch. It's essentially the same service but rebranded.
spbaar 8y ago
Why does this matter? What apis are you using that are not available in Lollipop, which has 88%+ market share. Also, those dashboards are misleading. For the North American market the proportion of older phones is less than half of what the dashboard displays
- izacus 8y ago
  For any kind of app targeting westen world (meaning - it's not localised into Hindi, African and Chinese languages), the market share of Lollipop will be below 20%. According to most app stats I've seen (mine and others), Android 6.0+ is pretty much on 80%+, with Oreo nearing 40% since Samsung started rollouts.
  - __sr__ 8y ago
    > For any kind of app targeting westen world (meaning - it's not localised into Hindi, African and Chinese languages), the market share of Lollipop will be below 20%. Where exactly are you getting this data from? Please do not put random numbers without citing sources.
    - pawadu 8y ago
      If you have published apps on Android, the developer console gives you detailed information about YOUR install base. Couldn't care less about someone in Somalia using Android 4.4 when 80% of my users are on Oreo.
    - izacus 8y ago
      It's based on my personal and my company apps. Obviously I can't give you links to our Play Store / Analytics backends. I guess there's an aggregator somewhere?
- georgemcbay 8y ago
  I'm not the OP, but there are some changes to background execution limits that can have a fairly large impact on older-than-Oreo apps if you build against SDK 26: https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/background https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/background You've been able to avoid dealing with these changes for a while now by simply building against an older SDK, but Google is in the process of restricting the ability to put any app built with an older SDK on the Play Store. I think you already can't list new apps that use an older SDK, and existing apps won't be able to update to new APKs using older SDKs starting in November. FWIW, I understand why they made the changes here, and they are user-positive, and just abandoning Android over them seems like an incredible overreaction, but speaking as someone who has been updating an older app to deal with these changes, there are some real pain-points here if you're bringing forward an older app.
euyyn 8y ago
Accounting for installation numbers only, there are about 6 Android users for each iOS user in the world. So targeting API 25 (Nougat 7.1) already gives you access to a bigger number of users. Targeting earlier API versions only increases that number.
- scarface74 8y ago
  - Most apps aren’t targeting “the world”. Assuming your app is targeting English speaking countries, that skews the numbers more toward iOS (still not a majority), then if your app requires a decent level of hardware, that skews even more toward iOS. Now if you actually want to target people who have the willingness to pay....
  - euyyn 8y ago
    Well that's part of it too. "A lower ratio of Android users are willing to pay than for iOS users" is a meaningless statistic for someone that wants to target people with high-end phones willing to pay. Because those ratios refer to the whole world. They do not mean "there are more iOS users willing to pay than Android users".
    - scarface74 8y ago
      The number of high end phones that are iPhones is greater than the number of high end Android phones - not just percentage. Samsun is the number one maker of phones and the number one maker of high end phones - if thier average selling price per phone is still only $235 (https://www.sammobile.com/2017/08/02/average-selling-price-samsungs-phones-go-thanks-galaxy-s8/ https://www.sammobile.com/2017/08/02/average-selling-price-s...). Even they sell mostly low in phones. Epic didn’t even bother supporting but two Android devices at launch (https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/7/17661358/fortnite-android-apk-download-leak-restrictions https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/7/17661358/fortnite-android-...) compared to the iOS version that supports devices back to 2016.
      - euyyn 8y ago
gammateam 8y ago
Android developers get around 3-5 years before they stop rationalizing the potential and ditch that ecosystem. Apple won this battle. The actual android users that "can't stand Apple and need control" have no clue what they are missing anymore. They haven't looked at Apple since 2013. Unlike Blackberry faithful, Android users really do have great more advanced technology on paper, but look, nobody cares.
- emidln 8y ago
  Sample size 1 here. I used an iPhoneX for a few months this year. It was my first iPhone, and I loathed the browser lock-in and the lack of automatic contacts sync. The UX is far less consistent than modern Android apps (e.g. the back functionality out of an app). I missed my app drawer as well. The iPhone was free from work, yet I paid out of pocket for a Galaxy S9+ so I could go back to Android.
  - ytwySXpMbS 8y ago
    Making an assumption here, but I assume you loathed the browser lock in because you tried using a different browser, probably Chrome. Thing is, for iOS, you have to drink the koolaid to truly see the benefit. Personally coming from Android it's so nice not being asked which app I want to open a link in all the time, I dont have to think about it. I know that sounds silly because you can choose a default, but it's too many options, I don't want to have to choose and think which option I'm going to want more often as long as it works.
    - wyattpeak 8y ago
      While I suspect you're right (a number of my family members use a full Apple ecosystem and love it), to someone who doesn't there seem to be an almost endless number of changes you need to make. I've had a couple of iPhones, and at times tried to fully use their system, but that promised "perfect simplicity" seems to always be around one more corner. Change your browser. Change your music provider. Change your backup procedure. And after all that, your Windows PC is a problem. And there I hit a wall, because I can't justify changing my PC, which is my livelihood, to an unfamiliar system in the hopes of simplicity. I'm not knocking the Apple paradigm for those who are inside it. But transitioning to that apparent state of seamlessness feels nigh impossible.
akerro 8y ago
My Motorola G4 was upgraded to Android 7 only 2 weeks ago :)
whyagaindavid 8y ago
>On the one hand Google's Nexus was released 3 years ago and is now obsolete; on >the other hand Apple's iPhone 5s was released 5 years ago and gets to run iOS 12. Which nexus u mean? Nexus 5x got oreo. Reg iPhone 5s, though u get iOS 12, if you use it as daily driver - I mean with maps/browser/uber/whatapp/fb/instagram like a common user does it grinds to a halt. Sure my boss has no apps just uses EMail/calling on a iPhone SE (5) still slow with iOS 11. YMMV. Whether u hate or love android is here to stay and consumers love it. Most people do not use the phones so long (sadly)! >On top of this, the vast majority of my paying customers use iOS, not Android (a Valid point. To make money then go for iOS.

jdc 8y ago

Why not use an older API version?

izacus 8y ago
Since this year you won't be allowed to do that anymore - since backwards compatibility behaviour allowed app developers to avoid privacy protecting features like runtime permissions.
- skybrian 8y ago
  I'm not an Android developer but they say supporting older versions should still work: "Existing apps that are not receiving updates are unaffected. Developers remain free to use a minSdkVersion of their choice, so there is no change to your ability to build apps for older Android versions." [1] https://developer.android.com/distribute/best-practices/develop/target-sdk https://developer.android.com/distribute/best-practices/deve...
  - fmorel 8y ago
    Yes, you can still support older versions. But the app must target at least Oreo, which means supporting the new permission model on newer versions of Android while making use of unfettered access on older versions.
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      Nothing prohibits backporting Cyanogen/Lineage permission controls to previous releases.
  - j16sdiz 8y ago
    Not if you want to be listed on play store > As we announced last year, Google Play will require all app updates to target Android Oreo (targetSdkVersion 26 or higher) by November 2018. https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/08/introducing-android-9-pie.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2018/08/introducin...
    - distances 8y ago
      Target sdk is different from min sdk. The feature set you can use depends on min sdk.

willtim 8y ago

They stopped selling the premium "Pixel C" tablet about 6 months ago and that is now obsolete (no Android 9).

izacus 8y ago

The only way you get only 12% installation share on Oreo is if you're targeting Indian continent with Hindi localisation. For a western world targeted app, the stats are around 35-40% for Oreo right now. So you seem to be deliberately ignoring your own installation stats just to complain - the dashboard you're posted is pretty much not relevant for anyone but multi-million installation apps like Facebook. In other words, if you ignore Oreo users, you're ignoring more (wealthy) people than there are owners of iPhone X. Also I simply fail to see how releases are dividing the market, considering the fact that for most apps new releases don't really require nearly as much maintenance as they do for new iOS releses. Granted, Oreo and P require a bit of work for apps that run in the background, but vast majority of the apps will just work if they implemented proper privacy respecting permissions since the release of 6.0 in 2015. Just to be clear - I don't mind if you give up Android development (good riddance actually, way too much toxic people in the community), but PLEASE do not spread misinformation.

Someone1234 8y ago
> but PLEASE do not spread misinformation. The data they quoted is official from Google themselves. You've provided no data source by contrast, just anecdotes. > good riddance actually, way too much toxic people in the community They're "toxic" because they're raising the cost of doing business in the ecosystem as a limiting factor? That's quite a stretch.
knuththetruth 8y ago
Conflating a very real and common concern (fragmentation in the android market) with “toxicity” seems a bit excessive.
- izacus 8y ago
  The OP wrote a post which has nothing to do with article at hand and is deliberately misleading. I think the term is fitting - it's complaining for complaining's sake. And that's toxic in a community. Compare it with the frontend developers - dealing with Android fragmentation is signficantly easier than dealing with browser and device fragmentation as a web developer... and those topics aren't full of people complaining.

otachack 8y ago

What are you upgrading? Usually it's just a matter of changing a couple numbers in the Gradle file. The only headache with new SDKs are if you're trying to integrate new features that aren't in appcompat but even then it's straight forward to support.

ilove_banh_mi 8y ago
Mainly notifications and speech.
0x0 8y ago
There's been tons of subtle and not so subtle breaking changes from bumping targetSdkVersion, many that only manifests at runtime. Things like runtime-permission-grants, three iterations of C2DM, GCM, FCM, notification handling, inner classes in activities and fragments, background processing, NDK changes, etc etc. If you have a low-churn legacy but still useful app, coming back every year and between the subtle api changes (which require runtime testing on old and new android devices) combined with an ever-reorganized google api console and play store console and firebase console is quite an effort. But I guess that's the cost of playing in the play store and for progress in the mobile OS landscape.
- j16sdiz 8y ago
  GCM is being removed by google. You have to migrate to FCM anyway. This is unrelated to the targetSdkVersion.
  - oakesm9 8y ago
    And it's a very small change on the app side to make the switch. It's essentially the same service but rebranded.

spbaar 8y ago

Why does this matter? What apis are you using that are not available in Lollipop, which has 88%+ market share. Also, those dashboards are misleading. For the North American market the proportion of older phones is less than half of what the dashboard displays

izacus 8y ago
For any kind of app targeting westen world (meaning - it's not localised into Hindi, African and Chinese languages), the market share of Lollipop will be below 20%. According to most app stats I've seen (mine and others), Android 6.0+ is pretty much on 80%+, with Oreo nearing 40% since Samsung started rollouts.
- __sr__ 8y ago
  > For any kind of app targeting westen world (meaning - it's not localised into Hindi, African and Chinese languages), the market share of Lollipop will be below 20%. Where exactly are you getting this data from? Please do not put random numbers without citing sources.
  - pawadu 8y ago
    If you have published apps on Android, the developer console gives you detailed information about YOUR install base. Couldn't care less about someone in Somalia using Android 4.4 when 80% of my users are on Oreo.
  - izacus 8y ago
    It's based on my personal and my company apps. Obviously I can't give you links to our Play Store / Analytics backends. I guess there's an aggregator somewhere?
georgemcbay 8y ago
I'm not the OP, but there are some changes to background execution limits that can have a fairly large impact on older-than-Oreo apps if you build against SDK 26: https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/background https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/background You've been able to avoid dealing with these changes for a while now by simply building against an older SDK, but Google is in the process of restricting the ability to put any app built with an older SDK on the Play Store. I think you already can't list new apps that use an older SDK, and existing apps won't be able to update to new APKs using older SDKs starting in November. FWIW, I understand why they made the changes here, and they are user-positive, and just abandoning Android over them seems like an incredible overreaction, but speaking as someone who has been updating an older app to deal with these changes, there are some real pain-points here if you're bringing forward an older app.

euyyn 8y ago

Accounting for installation numbers only, there are about 6 Android users for each iOS user in the world. So targeting API 25 (Nougat 7.1) already gives you access to a bigger number of users. Targeting earlier API versions only increases that number.

scarface74 8y ago
- Most apps aren’t targeting “the world”. Assuming your app is targeting English speaking countries, that skews the numbers more toward iOS (still not a majority), then if your app requires a decent level of hardware, that skews even more toward iOS. Now if you actually want to target people who have the willingness to pay....
- euyyn 8y ago
  Well that's part of it too. "A lower ratio of Android users are willing to pay than for iOS users" is a meaningless statistic for someone that wants to target people with high-end phones willing to pay. Because those ratios refer to the whole world. They do not mean "there are more iOS users willing to pay than Android users".
  - scarface74 8y ago
    The number of high end phones that are iPhones is greater than the number of high end Android phones - not just percentage. Samsun is the number one maker of phones and the number one maker of high end phones - if thier average selling price per phone is still only $235 (https://www.sammobile.com/2017/08/02/average-selling-price-samsungs-phones-go-thanks-galaxy-s8/ https://www.sammobile.com/2017/08/02/average-selling-price-s...). Even they sell mostly low in phones. Epic didn’t even bother supporting but two Android devices at launch (https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/7/17661358/fortnite-android-apk-download-leak-restrictions https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/7/17661358/fortnite-android-...) compared to the iOS version that supports devices back to 2016.
    - euyyn 8y ago

gammateam 8y ago

Android developers get around 3-5 years before they stop rationalizing the potential and ditch that ecosystem. Apple won this battle. The actual android users that "can't stand Apple and need control" have no clue what they are missing anymore. They haven't looked at Apple since 2013. Unlike Blackberry faithful, Android users really do have great more advanced technology on paper, but look, nobody cares.

emidln 8y ago
Sample size 1 here. I used an iPhoneX for a few months this year. It was my first iPhone, and I loathed the browser lock-in and the lack of automatic contacts sync. The UX is far less consistent than modern Android apps (e.g. the back functionality out of an app). I missed my app drawer as well. The iPhone was free from work, yet I paid out of pocket for a Galaxy S9+ so I could go back to Android.
- ytwySXpMbS 8y ago
  Making an assumption here, but I assume you loathed the browser lock in because you tried using a different browser, probably Chrome. Thing is, for iOS, you have to drink the koolaid to truly see the benefit. Personally coming from Android it's so nice not being asked which app I want to open a link in all the time, I dont have to think about it. I know that sounds silly because you can choose a default, but it's too many options, I don't want to have to choose and think which option I'm going to want more often as long as it works.
  - wyattpeak 8y ago
    While I suspect you're right (a number of my family members use a full Apple ecosystem and love it), to someone who doesn't there seem to be an almost endless number of changes you need to make. I've had a couple of iPhones, and at times tried to fully use their system, but that promised "perfect simplicity" seems to always be around one more corner. Change your browser. Change your music provider. Change your backup procedure. And after all that, your Windows PC is a problem. And there I hit a wall, because I can't justify changing my PC, which is my livelihood, to an unfamiliar system in the hopes of simplicity. I'm not knocking the Apple paradigm for those who are inside it. But transitioning to that apparent state of seamlessness feels nigh impossible.

akerro 8y ago

My Motorola G4 was upgraded to Android 7 only 2 weeks ago :)

whyagaindavid 8y ago

>On the one hand Google's Nexus was released 3 years ago and is now obsolete; on >the other hand Apple's iPhone 5s was released 5 years ago and gets to run iOS 12. Which nexus u mean? Nexus 5x got oreo. Reg iPhone 5s, though u get iOS 12, if you use it as daily driver - I mean with maps/browser/uber/whatapp/fb/instagram like a common user does it grinds to a halt. Sure my boss has no apps just uses EMail/calling on a iPhone SE (5) still slow with iOS 11. YMMV. Whether u hate or love android is here to stay and consumers love it. Most people do not use the phones so long (sadly)! >On top of this, the vast majority of my paying customers use iOS, not Android (a Valid point. To make money then go for iOS.