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Look, it's a blast from 2012, when iOS partisans were fond of claiming that the fatal flaw with Android was lower number of niche, low-audience apps or low app

Look, it's a blast from 2012, when iOS partisans were fond of claiming that the fatal flaw with Android was lower number of niche, low-audience apps or low app quality or something. It feels like these 10 years later, we should have some some pretty solid intuitions about how much of a competitive advantage this actually is for iOS.

whynotminot 4y ago
Seems like a pretty big competitive advantage? Isn’t iOS actually gaining market share?
- mrowlinson 4y ago
  Yes, and in most large markets. I think they’re really going to need to release a full screen iPhone SE to keep the momentum going though and all rumors point to it being canceled.
- aetherson 4y ago
  iOS is indeed gaining market share. It seems pretty clearly to be temporally unrelated to any app store advantages, which probably peaked 5-10 years ago. To be clear, I think that the availability of niche apps is some kind of competitive advantage for iOS. But not a particularly big one, and probably less of one now than it was a decade ago. The recent rise of iOS market share in the US probably has a lot to do with the wealth spike created by the pandemic, which advantages a marginally more expensive product. The other place I'd look is iPhone cameras vs Galaxy cameras, though honestly I'm not sure how good Galaxy's cameras are since I don't like Samsung's Android dialect.
  - whynotminot 4y ago
    > To be clear, I think that the availability of niche apps is some kind of competitive advantage for iOS. It's not just niche apps, though, as you put it. For instance, for years (might still actually be the case depending on phone model), creators complained about Instagram having terrible image quality on Android for content creation. Apparently the app was just screenshotting the camera view finder, instead of pulling the actual camera feed. Obviously on iPhone it's using the real camera data, delivering the expected image quality. That isn't a niche app. That's freaking Instagram. But that kind of story is fairly common place--developers take the time to get their apps right on iOS, because it's actually worth the time. People with iPhones spend more money and thus drive more advertising revenue. Android ends up with a second rate version of the app that's given less investment but actually has more devices to optimize for. With those constraints, it's just a natural result to end up with a lower quality app experience.
    - aetherson 4y ago
      The Instagram thing is evidence in the opposite direction from what you want it to be. Small developers may indeed find it too onerous to deal with the many devices and software versions of Android. For a small it even mid-sized shop, there are possibly opportunity costs to trying to make a first-class Android app that generally makes it hard to deliver optimized versions of it. Instagram, on the other hand, is not in that situation. Their reach is easily broad enough to hire another 10 or 20 Android engineers and tell them to optimize the app. Any lift at all in Instagram's Android numbers would be sufficient to make that business case. If they aren't doing that, it's evidence that nobody actually cares about this kind of app quality. No mid-level Facebook manager was able to justify a bigger team by saying, "from an addressable market of hundreds of millions in high-income countries alone, we can get a lift of a few million dollars by optimizing our app."
      - whynotminot 4y ago
        > The Instagram thing is evidence in the opposite direction from what you want it to be. I don't find your argument persuasive. If there was an ROI to building a better Android experience, don't you think major corporations would do it? You're right that Meta has the resources to do better. It's a pretty searing indictment of the Android ecosystem that they don't. > If they aren't doing that, it's evidence that nobody actually cares about this kind of app quality. Maybe it's evidence that the people who do care went and bought an iPhone already. Isn't this a problem for Android? Do they only want to cater to people who are willing to suffer substandard app experiences? Developers are by and large doing the work you say nobody cares about on iOS. It's apparently worth it there. Why aren't developers willing to put in the same level of effort on Android? If nobody actually cared I'd expect the user experience to be equally subpar across platforms but that's repeatedly proven to not be the case.
        aetherson 4y ago
        Your argument would make sense if iOS had like a 90% market share. Then sure, maybe the deal is that only weirdos who don't care about this objectively important thing are on Android. But the fact is, Android has plenty of market share. Even if half of Android users are weirdos who don't care about this objectively important thing (with the rest of the normal people migrating to iOS), it would still have positive ROI to build this objectively important thing for the people who care about this objectively important thing, but are on Android for whatever other reasons. The way to square this circle is say, "Actually, it turns out that this thing isn't objectively important. Maybe a small population cares about it a lot, but most don't." Which is, in fact, what I've been saying. This has the benefit of also squaring with the rest of the evidence.
IndigoPrime 4y ago
Another way of looking at this is that it clearly isn’t a fatal flaw. Most phone users don’t download many apps. Once they have the few usual suspects, they’re done. Android is, for that market, a good bet. It’s also superior for anyone who wants to more heavily customise their device (launchers, actions, etc) or dig into categories that are effectively banned on iOS (such as open emulation). Where in my experience Android fares poorly is in a certain kind of ambition. Part of my beat is apps coverage. I was relieved when an article I used to write was canned because it was a nightmare each month coming up with consumer/creative oriented quality apps on Android. (Things are getting tougher on iOS there, too, but it’s still ahead.) Even in that space, there are quality apps on Android, and surprises do happen. LumaFusion is a good example of that – even if it showed up years after it had been on iOS. But in these sorts of premium app spaces – media creation; writing tools; cameras; children’s apps; even games – iOS remains ahead. For most, that won’t make any odds. But for some, it’s the difference that matters.

whynotminot 4y ago

Seems like a pretty big competitive advantage? Isn’t iOS actually gaining market share?

mrowlinson 4y ago
Yes, and in most large markets. I think they’re really going to need to release a full screen iPhone SE to keep the momentum going though and all rumors point to it being canceled.
aetherson 4y ago
iOS is indeed gaining market share. It seems pretty clearly to be temporally unrelated to any app store advantages, which probably peaked 5-10 years ago. To be clear, I think that the availability of niche apps is some kind of competitive advantage for iOS. But not a particularly big one, and probably less of one now than it was a decade ago. The recent rise of iOS market share in the US probably has a lot to do with the wealth spike created by the pandemic, which advantages a marginally more expensive product. The other place I'd look is iPhone cameras vs Galaxy cameras, though honestly I'm not sure how good Galaxy's cameras are since I don't like Samsung's Android dialect.
- whynotminot 4y ago
  > To be clear, I think that the availability of niche apps is some kind of competitive advantage for iOS. It's not just niche apps, though, as you put it. For instance, for years (might still actually be the case depending on phone model), creators complained about Instagram having terrible image quality on Android for content creation. Apparently the app was just screenshotting the camera view finder, instead of pulling the actual camera feed. Obviously on iPhone it's using the real camera data, delivering the expected image quality. That isn't a niche app. That's freaking Instagram. But that kind of story is fairly common place--developers take the time to get their apps right on iOS, because it's actually worth the time. People with iPhones spend more money and thus drive more advertising revenue. Android ends up with a second rate version of the app that's given less investment but actually has more devices to optimize for. With those constraints, it's just a natural result to end up with a lower quality app experience.
  - aetherson 4y ago
    The Instagram thing is evidence in the opposite direction from what you want it to be. Small developers may indeed find it too onerous to deal with the many devices and software versions of Android. For a small it even mid-sized shop, there are possibly opportunity costs to trying to make a first-class Android app that generally makes it hard to deliver optimized versions of it. Instagram, on the other hand, is not in that situation. Their reach is easily broad enough to hire another 10 or 20 Android engineers and tell them to optimize the app. Any lift at all in Instagram's Android numbers would be sufficient to make that business case. If they aren't doing that, it's evidence that nobody actually cares about this kind of app quality. No mid-level Facebook manager was able to justify a bigger team by saying, "from an addressable market of hundreds of millions in high-income countries alone, we can get a lift of a few million dollars by optimizing our app."
    - whynotminot 4y ago
      > The Instagram thing is evidence in the opposite direction from what you want it to be. I don't find your argument persuasive. If there was an ROI to building a better Android experience, don't you think major corporations would do it? You're right that Meta has the resources to do better. It's a pretty searing indictment of the Android ecosystem that they don't. > If they aren't doing that, it's evidence that nobody actually cares about this kind of app quality. Maybe it's evidence that the people who do care went and bought an iPhone already. Isn't this a problem for Android? Do they only want to cater to people who are willing to suffer substandard app experiences? Developers are by and large doing the work you say nobody cares about on iOS. It's apparently worth it there. Why aren't developers willing to put in the same level of effort on Android? If nobody actually cared I'd expect the user experience to be equally subpar across platforms but that's repeatedly proven to not be the case.
      - aetherson 4y ago
        Your argument would make sense if iOS had like a 90% market share. Then sure, maybe the deal is that only weirdos who don't care about this objectively important thing are on Android. But the fact is, Android has plenty of market share. Even if half of Android users are weirdos who don't care about this objectively important thing (with the rest of the normal people migrating to iOS), it would still have positive ROI to build this objectively important thing for the people who care about this objectively important thing, but are on Android for whatever other reasons. The way to square this circle is say, "Actually, it turns out that this thing isn't objectively important. Maybe a small population cares about it a lot, but most don't." Which is, in fact, what I've been saying. This has the benefit of also squaring with the rest of the evidence.

IndigoPrime 4y ago

Another way of looking at this is that it clearly isn’t a fatal flaw. Most phone users don’t download many apps. Once they have the few usual suspects, they’re done. Android is, for that market, a good bet. It’s also superior for anyone who wants to more heavily customise their device (launchers, actions, etc) or dig into categories that are effectively banned on iOS (such as open emulation). Where in my experience Android fares poorly is in a certain kind of ambition. Part of my beat is apps coverage. I was relieved when an article I used to write was canned because it was a nightmare each month coming up with consumer/creative oriented quality apps on Android. (Things are getting tougher on iOS there, too, but it’s still ahead.) Even in that space, there are quality apps on Android, and surprises do happen. LumaFusion is a good example of that – even if it showed up years after it had been on iOS. But in these sorts of premium app spaces – media creation; writing tools; cameras; children’s apps; even games – iOS remains ahead. For most, that won’t make any odds. But for some, it’s the difference that matters.