6 ms·

iOS first – a flawed strategy that startups have used for years

43 points by wesselkooyman 12y ago

onion2k 12y ago
One of the most important things you learn when you're launching a startup is that the product has to match the market, and the market is never "everyone". You don't have that sort of marketing reach on a startup budget. Startups can get the word out through social media (people the founders know), people the founders and investors network with, through startup and early-adopter technology news (TC, HN, BetaList, ProductHunt, etc), through advertising if they have a budget for it, and, for a lucky few, through mainstream news if they're clever. Social, networks and tech news are all going to be 'iPhone heavy', and although that is changing, it's still enough to make iOS a sensible choice to market to first. TL;DR The fact that the Android market is bigger is irrelevant if you can't reach that segment of the market with your contacts and/or a very limited marketing budget.
- atmosx 12y ago
  These situations are hard to evaluate before and cheap to evaluate after a failure. There are too many parameters to keep in mind in order to make such decisions, but it's a good thing people share their experiences.
- wesselkooyman 12y ago
  This is exactly my point when i talk about the "tech bubble". iOS users keep telling themselves the numbers are somehow lying, and that their market is the early adopters, and that that market is decent sized. I don't think we appreciate how small that world is. But since it includes 90% of our direct peers, it feels bigger than it is.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    >This is exactly my point when i talk about the "tech bubble". iOS users keep telling themselves the numbers are somehow lying, and that their market is the early adopters, and that that market is decent sized. I don't think we appreciate how small that world is. Well, the fact that Android has a larger market share but is still playing catchup to money paid to developers, speaks volumes.
  - err4nt 12y ago
    I live in Canada and literally everybody in my life, except for one friend who is a huge Android fanboy, uses iOS. I don't have a phone, but I can still iMessage everybody else I know from my tablet except for one person. Now I love the idea of android, I love the technology and I use Linux daily on web servers so I get the customizeability and the appeal, but let's face it - if I write an iOS app I can send that to nearly everybody I know. If I write an android app only one person I know could install it.
    - mkr-hn 12y ago
      Everyone I know uses Android and Windows. Anecdotes don't say much about markets.
- fpgeek 12y ago
  You're making tons of unnecessarily limiting assumptions about the segment a startup might be targeting. There are plenty of segments worth targeting beyond people who pay attention to startup and early-adopter news. They might require more thought and creativity to reach, but there's also less competition if you do reach them. And plenty of those segments (e.g. most Asian countries) are very "Android heavy". You shouldn't separate what to develop from the problem you're solving and the people that care about it. Imagine, for instance, your app helped people sending and receiving international remittances. You'd be dead-in-the-water without an Android app. The sending side might be more complicated (I'm not sure), but the receiving side is overwhelmingly Android, if they have a smartphone at all.
josephlord 12y ago
The question is if you have haven't validated your product yet do you develop for iOS, Android or use a cross platform toolkit like PhoneGap. I think the answer will depend on what you have experience with, who your target market is and whether you want to target tablets (which still leans towards iOS in my view). Validate on one platform and then expand to another if it works is my current approach but it definitely isn't the only one.
AshFurrow 12y ago
> I’ve talked to lots of Android and iOS teams, and they say if they implement the same app on both platforms, the development time is roughly the same, and testing on Android is mostly a non-issue, as you can do it on your computer in emulators. Interesting. I've heard just the opposite, in fact: that iOS is significantly faster to develop on and that testing is a nightmare that must be done manually on-device. I would have liked the author to back this claim up with more than just anecdotes.
- rsynnott 12y ago
  I think a lot of this comes down to exactly what you're doing. For instance, if you're doing networking, getting fancy with the camera, or doing even slightly low-level OpenGL stuff, Android's likely to be more painful, especially in terms of testing, and old-version quirks. Fun minor example; before Android 4.3 or so (and only about 25% of Android users are on >=4.3), if, using the default HTTP library, you make a request to a server that uses HTTP compression, and the request returns a successful no-content result, like 204, that'll trigger a null pointer exception in the guts of the HTTP library. There are lots of these quirks; by themselves they're minor, but they build up. With things like the camera, it's worse, as vendor customisation comes into play.
  - BugBrother 12y ago
    But if you're not doing anything fancy, wouldn't a JavaScript variant be better? [E.g. potentially X-platform.]
    - rsynnott 12y ago
      I've yet to use a mobile web app (or phonegap thing, etc) which didn't make me want to tear my hair out. I mean, it may be possible to make such a thing, but people generally don't.
- josephlord 12y ago
  Both could be completely true for different scenarios. Maybe for many apps they are similar but for some that use phone features such as Bluetooth it might be much harder on Android. It might also depend on the level of polish you require, satisfactory apps may be as easy on both but to avoid any glitches you may need to do a lot of testing.
kosmopolska 12y ago
> If you look at this graph, in less than 12 months, Android will dominate in this final metric. I can't really see that in the graph, and anyhow you can't really predict what's going to happen from previous performance or trends. I'm not saying it won't happen, but I don't see it as inevitable.
splattne 12y ago
Instagram is a counter-example though.
- kelnos 12y ago
  To what? The author is specifically talking about making money directly from your app, which Instagram didn't do until recently (well after they released an Android version). And even then, it looks like their monetization strategy is to sell what appears to be a very limited number of ads-as-posts.
  - fpgeek 12y ago
    Instagram's monetization strategy was selling the company. That effectively required an Android version to protect and maximize their network's value. I wonder if Instagram would have gotten more money if they'd embraced Android sooner (like WhatsApp).
  - iand 12y ago
    Did you read the article? It's primary point is that there is more to the numbers than just the revenue earned via app sales because Android allows apps to use external subscription methods. It even cites a Salesforce CRM app as an example of this.
VSpike 12y ago
I live in a tech bubble, but I see a pretty even distribution of iOS vs. Android devices. Is this a US versus Europe thing, perhaps? Android phones and tablets seem pretty popular among UK geeks - at least as much as iOS. In fact, I frequently encounter among geeks a sort of snobbery against iOS - "it's eye candy for non-techy consumers". That view is not universal - like I say, it's a mixed picture - but it is significant.
- wesselkooyman 12y ago
  Maybe the Apple worshipping is over its peak! Until recently i lived in Paris, wherever you go in the tech/startup scene, it's an Apple-only world. I would literally sit there surrounded by 20-30 MacBook Air's and be the only non-Apple laptop! Made for lots of weird stares.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
nb1981 12y ago
I develop for iOS first because I want to. It's the platform I choose to use. I, personally, don't care for Android. The ONLY reason for me to develop for it is money. That's a recipe for shitty work. Does it have to be more complicated than that? If I'm making a mistake, so be it. What do you care?!
- chippy 12y ago
  Some people would argue that "I" and "What do you care?!" is an example of inward focus, not looking outward towards the user. Such people would say that ethical and good development should improve the overall human condition and that it should help people somehow. Some others would say at least by doing so it should increase profits for the company than being inward focused. I think the article is saying that it is irrational not to be developing for Android - even if a developer doesn't like it, they should be making more money...
  - nb1981 12y ago
    Depends on what you want out of your career as a developer; again, personally, I try to make things that I want/need myself because I find doing it the other way (looking for a hole on the market and filling it, for example) doesn't give me what I want. The motivation is all wrong and I get no satisfaction from that kind of success. The difference, to me, is whether you're focussed on the product or the reward. I try to focus on the product because that's the best long term strategy in my opinion. "good development should improve the overall human condition" uh - that's a lot of pressure. I just want to make stuff. Not everything we do has to have a goal, a target. Just build.
simonh 12y ago
So in an article mainly criticizing the historical decision of developers to release on iOS first, this guy publishes a graph showing that historically considerably more than double the money has been spent on iOS apps than Android apps. Then he calls developer's tendency to release on iOS first over that period irrational. OK
- danmaz74 12y ago
  He isn't criticizing the "historical decision". He is criticizing decisions being taken now.
  - simonh 12y ago
    Perhaps you should read the title of the article, and reconsider your comment in that light.
    - dkersten 12y ago
      From the article: We’re so focused on revenue from the app store, that we ignore some facts: lots of apps support other platforms, and generate revenue on other ways. My phone has a great SalesForce CRM app on it – it’s free. But of course our company pays for the CRM! Apps also often drive revenue on other platforms. In Android apps, you can freely send users to another platform to do a transaction – how much revenue is generated that way? iOS blocks this, by the way, and insists on a 30% cut. Other apps are ad based, and that revenue can come from any one of hundreds of ad exchanges. Again, none of that revenue is part of this graph.
      - simonh 12y ago
        If iOS didn't have apps that generate revenue in those ways you might have a point, but it does. The question you need to answer is why you think the platform with the lower user engagement stats, lower online purchasing metrics and lower app revenue stats is likely to benefit from them more than the leader in all those other metrics.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
wmt 12y ago
I'd really want this article to be true and that developing for Android first would be an equally good strategy. However, the claim that IOS-first is irrational is just dishonest. While Android total money spent in apps is gaining, iOS has been a solid leader for its entire history. Every decision to go for Apple first has been a correct one. This is perfectly summed up by the first comment on the page: "All I know is that my $3.99 iOS app outsells my $3.99 Android app 5-10:1"
- Oletros 12y ago
  > This is perfectly summed up by the first comment on the page: That comment, without looking the app, don't say anything
- chippy 12y ago
  I suspect there is a big difference between independent developers, software houses, rapid growth startups and bigger corporations when it comes to making mobile apps. The article addresses itself towards startups. I would imagine that growth is more important than selling an app for a price. For a small company selling apps, selling apps would be their income. The article focuses on the money, but argues about the pain points and technology bubble, which isn't a compelling argument when $3.99 apps do sell better.
- wesselkooyman 12y ago
  Hi, i'm the author. The point i was trying to make is that all we know is that we're looking at an incomplete picture. App store revenue is by far not the only way to make money with an app - i use CRM apps as an example, but many SaaS platforms have a supporting app, and we're not measuring that revenue at all. Neither are we measuing ad revenue. But i agree, there's lots of anecdotal evidence either way :)
  - manicdee 12y ago
    Can you provide me an example where it makes sense for a startup to produce software for free to support some commercial software they don't own? If they're bankrolled by the commercial product's vendor, aren't they really a contract programming shop, not a startup?
richardw 12y ago
A counter-argument from April (they started on Android, 16 months later moved to iOS), with HN discussion: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/06/the-fallacy-of-android-first/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/06/the-fallacy-of-android-firs... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7543642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7543642 The answer is probably: it depends.
coldtea 12y ago
>and it was the phone of ‘poor people’ – people that didn’t spend money on their phones. I don't see that change anytime soon. Simply for the fact that tons of Android phones are sold at the cheapest tier, where people used to buy feature phones, whereas there's no iPhone catering to the lower end of the market (not even 5C). Plus, his diagrams shows Android below iOS in payments to developers but "catching up". What it doesn't say is that Android has larger market share, so that it's below on payments (and thus app sales) is problematic.
coldtea 12y ago
He doesn't seem to understand the notion of opportunity cost. That it's sometimes wise to leave money of the table, if you have to spread yourself think and work twice as hard for diminishing returns. iOS first is perfectly fine for launch. Tons of highly succesful apps did just that. You don't have to mess with the fragmentation (even though the latest party line is that "it's not that big a deal"), and you get access to the more lucrative demographic in general (sure, there are billionaires using Android too -- but in average, iOS users pay more for their phones, and get higher wages).
jljljl 12y ago
>>> In Android apps, you can freely send users to another platform to do a transaction – how much revenue is generated that way? iOS blocks this, by the way, and insists on a 30% cut. This feels like a key insight...I wonder how many android apps are using alternatives to Google Play for their transactions, and how this affects the revenue numbers.

43 points by wesselkooyman 12y ago

One of the most important things you learn when you're launching a startup is that the product has to match the market, and the market is never "everyone". You don't have that sort of marketing reach on a startup budget. Startups can get the word out through social media (people the founders know), people the founders and investors network with, through startup and early-adopter technology news (TC, HN, BetaList, ProductHunt, etc), through advertising if they have a budget for it, and, for a lucky few, through mainstream news if they're clever. Social, networks and tech news are all going to be 'iPhone heavy', and although that is changing, it's still enough to make iOS a sensible choice to market to first. TL;DR The fact that the Android market is bigger is irrelevant if you can't reach that segment of the market with your contacts and/or a very limited marketing budget.

atmosx 12y ago
These situations are hard to evaluate before and cheap to evaluate after a failure. There are too many parameters to keep in mind in order to make such decisions, but it's a good thing people share their experiences.
wesselkooyman 12y ago
This is exactly my point when i talk about the "tech bubble". iOS users keep telling themselves the numbers are somehow lying, and that their market is the early adopters, and that that market is decent sized. I don't think we appreciate how small that world is. But since it includes 90% of our direct peers, it feels bigger than it is.
- coldtea 12y ago
  >This is exactly my point when i talk about the "tech bubble". iOS users keep telling themselves the numbers are somehow lying, and that their market is the early adopters, and that that market is decent sized. I don't think we appreciate how small that world is. Well, the fact that Android has a larger market share but is still playing catchup to money paid to developers, speaks volumes.
- err4nt 12y ago
  I live in Canada and literally everybody in my life, except for one friend who is a huge Android fanboy, uses iOS. I don't have a phone, but I can still iMessage everybody else I know from my tablet except for one person. Now I love the idea of android, I love the technology and I use Linux daily on web servers so I get the customizeability and the appeal, but let's face it - if I write an iOS app I can send that to nearly everybody I know. If I write an android app only one person I know could install it.
  - mkr-hn 12y ago
    Everyone I know uses Android and Windows. Anecdotes don't say much about markets.
fpgeek 12y ago
You're making tons of unnecessarily limiting assumptions about the segment a startup might be targeting. There are plenty of segments worth targeting beyond people who pay attention to startup and early-adopter news. They might require more thought and creativity to reach, but there's also less competition if you do reach them. And plenty of those segments (e.g. most Asian countries) are very "Android heavy". You shouldn't separate what to develop from the problem you're solving and the people that care about it. Imagine, for instance, your app helped people sending and receiving international remittances. You'd be dead-in-the-water without an Android app. The sending side might be more complicated (I'm not sure), but the receiving side is overwhelmingly Android, if they have a smartphone at all.

josephlord 12y ago

The question is if you have haven't validated your product yet do you develop for iOS, Android or use a cross platform toolkit like PhoneGap. I think the answer will depend on what you have experience with, who your target market is and whether you want to target tablets (which still leans towards iOS in my view). Validate on one platform and then expand to another if it works is my current approach but it definitely isn't the only one.

AshFurrow 12y ago

> I’ve talked to lots of Android and iOS teams, and they say if they implement the same app on both platforms, the development time is roughly the same, and testing on Android is mostly a non-issue, as you can do it on your computer in emulators. Interesting. I've heard just the opposite, in fact: that iOS is significantly faster to develop on and that testing is a nightmare that must be done manually on-device. I would have liked the author to back this claim up with more than just anecdotes.

rsynnott 12y ago
I think a lot of this comes down to exactly what you're doing. For instance, if you're doing networking, getting fancy with the camera, or doing even slightly low-level OpenGL stuff, Android's likely to be more painful, especially in terms of testing, and old-version quirks. Fun minor example; before Android 4.3 or so (and only about 25% of Android users are on >=4.3), if, using the default HTTP library, you make a request to a server that uses HTTP compression, and the request returns a successful no-content result, like 204, that'll trigger a null pointer exception in the guts of the HTTP library. There are lots of these quirks; by themselves they're minor, but they build up. With things like the camera, it's worse, as vendor customisation comes into play.
- BugBrother 12y ago
  But if you're not doing anything fancy, wouldn't a JavaScript variant be better? [E.g. potentially X-platform.]
  - rsynnott 12y ago
    I've yet to use a mobile web app (or phonegap thing, etc) which didn't make me want to tear my hair out. I mean, it may be possible to make such a thing, but people generally don't.
josephlord 12y ago
Both could be completely true for different scenarios. Maybe for many apps they are similar but for some that use phone features such as Bluetooth it might be much harder on Android. It might also depend on the level of polish you require, satisfactory apps may be as easy on both but to avoid any glitches you may need to do a lot of testing.

kosmopolska 12y ago

> If you look at this graph, in less than 12 months, Android will dominate in this final metric. I can't really see that in the graph, and anyhow you can't really predict what's going to happen from previous performance or trends. I'm not saying it won't happen, but I don't see it as inevitable.

splattne 12y ago

Instagram is a counter-example though.

kelnos 12y ago
To what? The author is specifically talking about making money directly from your app, which Instagram didn't do until recently (well after they released an Android version). And even then, it looks like their monetization strategy is to sell what appears to be a very limited number of ads-as-posts.
- fpgeek 12y ago
  Instagram's monetization strategy was selling the company. That effectively required an Android version to protect and maximize their network's value. I wonder if Instagram would have gotten more money if they'd embraced Android sooner (like WhatsApp).
- iand 12y ago
  Did you read the article? It's primary point is that there is more to the numbers than just the revenue earned via app sales because Android allows apps to use external subscription methods. It even cites a Salesforce CRM app as an example of this.

VSpike 12y ago

I live in a tech bubble, but I see a pretty even distribution of iOS vs. Android devices. Is this a US versus Europe thing, perhaps? Android phones and tablets seem pretty popular among UK geeks - at least as much as iOS. In fact, I frequently encounter among geeks a sort of snobbery against iOS - "it's eye candy for non-techy consumers". That view is not universal - like I say, it's a mixed picture - but it is significant.

wesselkooyman 12y ago
Maybe the Apple worshipping is over its peak! Until recently i lived in Paris, wherever you go in the tech/startup scene, it's an Apple-only world. I would literally sit there surrounded by 20-30 MacBook Air's and be the only non-Apple laptop! Made for lots of weird stares.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

nb1981 12y ago

I develop for iOS first because I want to. It's the platform I choose to use. I, personally, don't care for Android. The ONLY reason for me to develop for it is money. That's a recipe for shitty work. Does it have to be more complicated than that? If I'm making a mistake, so be it. What do you care?!

chippy 12y ago
Some people would argue that "I" and "What do you care?!" is an example of inward focus, not looking outward towards the user. Such people would say that ethical and good development should improve the overall human condition and that it should help people somehow. Some others would say at least by doing so it should increase profits for the company than being inward focused. I think the article is saying that it is irrational not to be developing for Android - even if a developer doesn't like it, they should be making more money...
- nb1981 12y ago
  Depends on what you want out of your career as a developer; again, personally, I try to make things that I want/need myself because I find doing it the other way (looking for a hole on the market and filling it, for example) doesn't give me what I want. The motivation is all wrong and I get no satisfaction from that kind of success. The difference, to me, is whether you're focussed on the product or the reward. I try to focus on the product because that's the best long term strategy in my opinion. "good development should improve the overall human condition" uh - that's a lot of pressure. I just want to make stuff. Not everything we do has to have a goal, a target. Just build.

simonh 12y ago

So in an article mainly criticizing the historical decision of developers to release on iOS first, this guy publishes a graph showing that historically considerably more than double the money has been spent on iOS apps than Android apps. Then he calls developer's tendency to release on iOS first over that period irrational. OK

danmaz74 12y ago
He isn't criticizing the "historical decision". He is criticizing decisions being taken now.
- simonh 12y ago
  Perhaps you should read the title of the article, and reconsider your comment in that light.
  - dkersten 12y ago
    From the article: We’re so focused on revenue from the app store, that we ignore some facts: lots of apps support other platforms, and generate revenue on other ways. My phone has a great SalesForce CRM app on it – it’s free. But of course our company pays for the CRM! Apps also often drive revenue on other platforms. In Android apps, you can freely send users to another platform to do a transaction – how much revenue is generated that way? iOS blocks this, by the way, and insists on a 30% cut. Other apps are ad based, and that revenue can come from any one of hundreds of ad exchanges. Again, none of that revenue is part of this graph.
    - simonh 12y ago
      If iOS didn't have apps that generate revenue in those ways you might have a point, but it does. The question you need to answer is why you think the platform with the lower user engagement stats, lower online purchasing metrics and lower app revenue stats is likely to benefit from them more than the leader in all those other metrics.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

wmt 12y ago

I'd really want this article to be true and that developing for Android first would be an equally good strategy. However, the claim that IOS-first is irrational is just dishonest. While Android total money spent in apps is gaining, iOS has been a solid leader for its entire history. Every decision to go for Apple first has been a correct one. This is perfectly summed up by the first comment on the page: "All I know is that my $3.99 iOS app outsells my $3.99 Android app 5-10:1"

Oletros 12y ago
> This is perfectly summed up by the first comment on the page: That comment, without looking the app, don't say anything
chippy 12y ago
I suspect there is a big difference between independent developers, software houses, rapid growth startups and bigger corporations when it comes to making mobile apps. The article addresses itself towards startups. I would imagine that growth is more important than selling an app for a price. For a small company selling apps, selling apps would be their income. The article focuses on the money, but argues about the pain points and technology bubble, which isn't a compelling argument when $3.99 apps do sell better.
wesselkooyman 12y ago
Hi, i'm the author. The point i was trying to make is that all we know is that we're looking at an incomplete picture. App store revenue is by far not the only way to make money with an app - i use CRM apps as an example, but many SaaS platforms have a supporting app, and we're not measuring that revenue at all. Neither are we measuing ad revenue. But i agree, there's lots of anecdotal evidence either way :)
- manicdee 12y ago
  Can you provide me an example where it makes sense for a startup to produce software for free to support some commercial software they don't own? If they're bankrolled by the commercial product's vendor, aren't they really a contract programming shop, not a startup?

richardw 12y ago

A counter-argument from April (they started on Android, 16 months later moved to iOS), with HN discussion: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/06/the-fallacy-of-android-first/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/06/the-fallacy-of-android-firs... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7543642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7543642 The answer is probably: it depends.

coldtea 12y ago

>and it was the phone of ‘poor people’ – people that didn’t spend money on their phones. I don't see that change anytime soon. Simply for the fact that tons of Android phones are sold at the cheapest tier, where people used to buy feature phones, whereas there's no iPhone catering to the lower end of the market (not even 5C). Plus, his diagrams shows Android below iOS in payments to developers but "catching up". What it doesn't say is that Android has larger market share, so that it's below on payments (and thus app sales) is problematic.

coldtea 12y ago

He doesn't seem to understand the notion of opportunity cost. That it's sometimes wise to leave money of the table, if you have to spread yourself think and work twice as hard for diminishing returns. iOS first is perfectly fine for launch. Tons of highly succesful apps did just that. You don't have to mess with the fragmentation (even though the latest party line is that "it's not that big a deal"), and you get access to the more lucrative demographic in general (sure, there are billionaires using Android too -- but in average, iOS users pay more for their phones, and get higher wages).

jljljl 12y ago

>>> In Android apps, you can freely send users to another platform to do a transaction – how much revenue is generated that way? iOS blocks this, by the way, and insists on a 30% cut. This feels like a key insight...I wonder how many android apps are using alternatives to Google Play for their transactions, and how this affects the revenue numbers.