The Android market sucks in about every category you could possibly consider. Discovery is pretty terrible, sales rates are awful and even more enjoyably, Google dumps all the support on you. Oh, and the device market is fragmented as hell, the code is very inconsistent ( I encountered SDK calls that work on 1.6 and 2.2 but not 2.1??? ), the emulator is complete garbage ( Tablet emulation is so sloooooooooowwww as to be unusable ) and Google developer support is basically non-existent.


TL;DR, Android marketplace sucks, especially for games.

The only way I would ever consider working with Android again is if I completed a game with an engine like Unity that allowed me to do a single click build for non-iOS platforms. I have heard of developers not even coming close to making the 399$ licensing fee back!

I believe Android beats anything else these days.

And why only list these two platforms? There are other platforms (e.g., Symbian was the number one platform until this year, and still likely has a large installed userbase bigger than Apple's). Of course, cross-platform is good too, but in that case, make it actually cross-platform. (I'm fed up with having one of the most popular platforms, but seeing people write only for Apple, and maybe occasionally Android - it would be like living in a world where I run Windows, and everyone is writing for Mac!)

[quote='Serapth']Discovery is pretty terrible, sales rates are awful and even more enjoyably[/quote]If we're discussing sales per games, then I would add that it's Nokia's OVI that has the largest downloads per app, by a massive margin of 160% ( http://www.research2...pple-app-store/ ). Windows and Blackberry also beat Apple. (You're right than Android is behind, though 5% is not what I'd call "awful".)

And if we're discussing SDKs, they use Qt, which I think is pretty good.

I've been a mobile developer for 5 years now, and this is spot on of what's happening on Android. I think Google mismanaged the Android platform by leaving it out in the wild. It's J2ME all over again. It gets good market penetration by making it open source, a lot of companies are adopting it, including cheap tables from China, but Google is not controlling anything on Android compared to what Apple did with its iOS platform.

The problem with J2ME was surely that its API is more limited. I don't see that leaving it in the wild is causing problems.

Whilst there is the issue of "lowest common denominator" (where developers aren't sure what features available), but after several generations of phones, this applies to Apple also now.

There is no centralized update system like iOS If you have a 2.2 device, you are stuck at 2.2 unless you buy a new phone. And you hear all this "Google releasing new platform: Ice Cream Sandwich/Gingerbread/Floorcaek/whatever". [/quote]I think that's better for phone developers, it means you can assume a particular OS that you target has a certain device. As opposed to writing for IOS 5, but you don't know if they might be running on something that's now ancient.

(Plus, you can update the OS on Android, like any phone, it just isn't always offered to the very latest version.)

How is that going to benefit consumers if they had to shell out another $199 for a new phone plus contractual obligations?[/quote]I'm not sure this is much of a problem - if you always want the latest thing, you'll want the latest phone too. If not, their current phone and OS is fine too. Why the obsession to run the latest OS on old hardware? Maybe it's needed for IOS, where it lacked basic features like copy/paste and multitasking, but other OSs have been fine from the start, so it's less of a problem. Yes, some people moan that they can't run Windows 7 on a 486, but I'm not sure these are much of a market.

Plus paying $199 every few years still works out cheaper when you look at how much an Iphone costs...

If it doesn't benefit consumers, it won't benefit developers. So now as a developer, you have to support a huge range of versions, from 1.6 to 3.1. Guess what'd make the most sense? Make it for 1.6. Screw Gingerbread, screw Ice Cream Sandwich, and all of their fancy "new" features.[/quote]But look at it it turns of hardware - due you target the latest phones, or have to support an original Iphone from 4 years ago? And sure, if you decide to make it for 1.6, then that's fine - that's a different thing from saying don't support Android at all. Just as writing your Iphone app for an ancient original Iphone isn't the same as not supporting Apple at all.

I don't see that this is anything new. If you need the latest OS, then put that as a system requirement. If you're worried about limiting your market, then support multiple platforms. (I find it odd that people complain about wanting to maximise market share, but then only support a platform that has never been number one...) You don't get people on the desktop saying there's no point developing for Windows, because the market's split between Vista/7 and 2000/XP.

[quote name='mdwh' timestamp='1318943579' post='4873895']
I believe Android beats anything else these days.

Based on what?

I know for a fact that it's not paying customers, cost of development, user experience or developer experience.[/quote]I was referring to market share.

For paying customers per app, true - my link showed Android slightly below Apple, though both were far from top.

"Experience" is a matter of opinion, and well, which of the many phone platforms is best is an endless debate in itself

What do you mean by cost of development, OOI?

If anything, market might be split between DX10/11 and DX9, but it's fairly expensive to take sufficient advantage of DX10+ to warrant such distinction.[/quote]Yes I agree that this would be a good analogy too. It can be a problem, but also it's not something that developers can't or shouldn't handle, or ruins a platform. Whilst it's true that OpenGL was (I believe) amusingly the only way to bring the latest features to Windows XP, it doesn't seem to have resulted in any kind of return to OpenGL for Windows - it seems people just either stick with DirectX 9 (if they don't need anything better), or support both 9 and 10/11.

The reason MS has such huge ground is because of backward compatibility. Heck, all these applications will continue to work unchanged in x86 Win8, so you get 5-8 years guaranteed.[/quote]Yes true. (Is this true of Android too? I believe the issue being discussed was more forward compatibility.)