Android is a clear market winner (as of August 2014) when it comes to units sold… so why do many developers make their apps iPhone first?
Wow, Android has over 80%.. Let’s dig into the data a bit more. What happens if we blow up the data and look at it from a country by country basis. -
Certain countries are more Android dominant than others, but places like China skews the data, since there are 450M unique smartphone users there, and with a 80% Android share. It’s the same picture for many developing countries where budget Android smartphones are selling a lot.
How are these smartphones used? Let’s look at traffic share -
For less than 20% in shipments, iOS still commands 44.19% of traffic at a global level. If we were to isolate this to developed countries, and countries with a much more mature mobile data infrastructure, the numbers are more telling. iOS still rules the roost when it comes to usage.
If your app is targeting Android dominated economies (e.g. developing countries, S.Korea etc.) then you would go Android first, but if you’re targeting more mature markets with well developed mobile data networks, it makes more sense to go iOS first and follow up with Android later. It’s better to test with a likely high use market first, than to waste effort and split resources working on 2 platforms when the product is not proven, hence reducing potentially wasted effort.
Get it right first, before scaling, and the optimal way to test is by reaching out to users who are more likely to test it out.