Android OS Vs. Apple iOS – Which is better for developers?

With the number of smartphone users increasing each day, there is an equal increase in the number of app developers for the same. Though developers have a whole lot of mobile platforms to choose from, they would most probably select one of the two most sought-after mobile OS’ today, Apple's iOS and Google’s Android. So, which of these is better for developers and why? Here is a detailed comparison between the Apple iOS and the Android OS for developers.

Programming Language Used

The Android OS uses mainly Java, which is the common programming language used by developers. Hence, developing Android gets that much easier for most developers.

The iPhone OS uses Apple’s Objective-C language, which can mostly be unravelled by app developers who are already familiar with C and C++. This being more exclusive, may become a stumbling block for developers who are not too proficient in other programming languages.

Developing Multi-Platform Apps

Developing multi-platform apps seems to be the “in” thing today. Of course, you cannot run Java-based apps on the iPhone or Objective-C-based apps on Android devices.
There are tools for multi-platform app development today. But they may not be effective when it comes to actually displaying the original information on another mobile OS. Mobile game developers especially find cross-platforming a huge challenge.

Hence, the only viable, long-term solution here would be to rewrite your app in the device’s own native language.

App Development Platform

Android offers developers an open development platforms and allows them the liberty to use third-party tools for app development. This helps them play around with many features of their app, adding more functionality to them. This is vital to the success of this platform, which comes with an impressive range of mobile devices.

Apple, on the other hand, is pretty restrictive with their developer guidelines. The developer here is given a fixed set of tools to develop apps and cannot use anything outside of those. This would eventually curb his creative skills to a large extent.

Multitasking Abilities

The Android OS is very versatile and can help developers create dynamic apps for multiple purposes. But this very multitasking ability of the Android OS very often creates problems for the amateur Android developer, since it takes a lot of time to learn, understand and master. This, combined with Android’s highly fragmented platform, poses a real challenge to the Android developer.

In contrast, Apple presents a more stable, exclusive platform for app developers, clearly specifying tools, defining both their potential and boundaries. This makes it much easier for the iOS developer to proceed with the task ahead of him.

Mobile App Testing

Android offers an excellent testing environment for its developers. All the testing tools available are neatly indexed and the IDE offers a good model of the source code. This lets developers test their app thoroughly and debug wherever required, before presenting it to the Android Market.

Apple’s Xcode lags far behind Android’s standards here and has miles to go before it can even hope to catch up with the latter.

App Approval

The Apple App Store takes 3-4 weeks for app approval. They are also finicky and place many restrictions on the app developer. Of course, this factor has not deterred the several hundreds of developers approaching the App Store every month. Though Apple also offers an open API using which developers can host the app on their site, this is not very effective, as the app cannot get even a fraction of that exposure outside the App Store.

The Android Market, on the other hand, presents no such stiff resistance to the developer. This makes it very convenient for the Android developer.

Payment Procedure

iOS developers can earn 70% of the revenue generated from the sales of their app in the Apple App Store. But they have to pay an annual fee of $99 to gain access to the iPhone SDK.
Android developers, on the other hand, only need to pay a one-time registration fee of $25 and can earn 70% of revenue of the sales of their app in the Android Market. They can also feature the same app in other app marketplaces too, if they so wish.

Conclusion

In conclusion, both the Andriod OS and the Apple iOS have their own pluses and minuses. Both are equally strong contenders and are bound to rule the app marketplace with their own strengths and positives.

Useful tips on marketing your iPhone App

Ways to Promote Your Apple iPhone App and Make the Maximum Profit

Congratulations on successfully creating your Apple iPhone app and even more importantly, on getting it approved by the Apple App Store. The next step you need to think of is to promote your iPhone app and make the maximum profit from the sales of this app. While general app marketing techniques are more or less the same across the entire range of mobile devices and platforms available today, the App Store deserves special treatment, as it is a huge store that includes mobile apps in every imaginable, probable category. Marketing your iPhone app in such a way as to make it stand out among them all is quite a Herculean task.

Listed below are some ways you can use to successfully market your iPhone app in the Apple App Store:

Promote App in the iTunes App Store

Promoting your app in the iTunes app store is one step you should never neglect, as it may well prove to be the single most influential factor in bestowing you success in this app marketplace.

It is a fact that the most avid iPhone users are constantly on the lookout for newer apps for their iPhone and iPad. These users would most probably visit the iTunes App Store to get useful information on the latest apps. This is the reason why focusing on this app store is so important to you.

Focus on Making Your App Appealing

Since the iTunes App Store is a veritable gateway for you to make good profits with your iPhone app, you should focus on making the app most appealing to visitors. For this, the overall appearance of the app must be effective enough to generate a good conversion rate among visitors, that is, to rope in as many customers as possible. The following is what you should do in order to enhance app appearance and make it more engaging for your visitors:

1.      As we have seen before, properly naming your app is one of the most important steps in achieve success with app marketing. Your app name should be such that it describes the function of your app, cleverly including the keyword within itself. A good app name is the first and foremost thing to get your app featured prominently in the latest app listings.

2.      The app description should be clear and concise, stating the exact purpose for which your iPhone app has been created. This description should be keyword-rich as well. You should also feature clear photos and video previews of your app, so that potential users get a good idea about the same.

3.      Next, get as many customer reviews on your app. The more the positive reviews, the more are the chances of your app being featured repeatedly in the app store listings. The best way to get started with this is to share your app among family and friends, asking them to post their reviews online.

Submit App to iPhone Review Sites

Many iPhone developers tend to overlook this simple but very effective technique to further promote their app and give it most visibility in the marketplace. App review sites are nice locations to feature your app for free, as also get your much-needed user reviews for your app.

Though this technique does not guarantee instant app popularity, it does give you one more way to get your app that precious little piece of attention from visitors to such sites. Besides, this is a place which offers you an additional opportunity for link-building to your mobile app Website, in case you have already created one.

Social Network and Website Banner Ads

Most app developers typically concentrate on promoting their apps via the various social networks today. While this may be able to bring in a few users for your app, it cannot be the primary vehicle for app promotion. For instance, advertising on social Websites such as Facebook can prove to be very expensive for you. Not only that; not too many users are particularly interested in clicking on the ads placed on such Websites. Hence, advertising on these sites may not be worth the time, effort and money taken for the same.

The same is the case for banner advertising. Unless you are already a well-established app developer, who has won accolades with many apps in the past, the chances are that not many visitors on social networks will want to click on your ad. Nevertheless, it may help generate a certain minimum amount of sales for you.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, though marketing via social networks and mobvertising certainly enable you to make money to some degree, the most important step towards successfully marketing your iPhone app would be to feature it in the iTunes App Store and also try and gather the maximum possible amount of positive user reviews for the same.

Wish you all the best with your marketing venture!

How do I sell my iPhone App via the App Store?

An overview of the process of getting an iPhone App into the App Store

Having seen the success of some developers in selling Apps for the iPhone, and with the iPad now out, there must be many developers thinking "Why not Me?". Notable early successes include Trism in 2008, where developer Steve Demeter created the puzzle game as a side project and made $250,000 (net of Apple's cut) within a couple of months.
Last year saw FireMint's Flight Control hold the #1 spot for several weeks and it sold over 700,000. The link above leads to a 16 page PDF where they published their sales figures. They're hoping to repeat the success now with an upgraded HD version for the iPad.

Billion $ Business

There are well over 100,000 registered iPhone App developers, with over 186,000 Apps in the App Store for the iPhone/iPod and over 3,500 for the iPad when this was written (according to 148 Apps). Apple by their own admission has sold over 85 million devices (50 million iPhones and 35 million iPod Touches) and games are the number one category which makes it a lot harder to achieve success. In April according to 148 Apps, an average of 105 games were released every day!

A year ago, one billion apps had been downloaded and it now stands at 3 billion. A large number of those are free (approx 22% of Apps ) but it's still an immense amount of money paid out by Apple to developers after the 30% cut that Apple takes.

It's not that easy to make a lot of money. Creating the App is one thing but selling it in sufficient numbers is a whole different ball game that demands that you promote it, and provide free copies to reviews. In some cases, people pay reviewers to get their Apps reviewed. If you're really lucky and Apple pick up on it you'll get a lot of free promotion.

Getting Started

If you're new to iPhone development, then you should definitely get this first:

• Apple Development Secrets

In a nutshell if you want to develop for the iPhone:

• You need a Mac Computer of some kind, Mac Mini, iMac, MacBook etc. You cannot develop for the App Store on a Windows or Linux PC.
• Join the Free iPhone Developers Program. This gives access to the SDK and Xcode development system which you download and install. It includes an emulator so you can test most apps except those which need hardware such as the camera or GPS.
• Pay $99 a year for access to the developer program. This lets you install apps on your own iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad. It also gives earlier access to betas and past versions of the SDK.

Development Process

So you've been developing away and have got a version that runs in the emulator. Next you've paid your $99 and been accepted in the developer's program. This means you can now try your app out on your iPhone. Here is an overview of how you do that. Apple's developer website provides a lot more detail.

You need an iPhone Development certificate.

For that you have to run the Keychain Access app on your Mac (in developer tools) and generate a Certificate Signing Request then upload it to Apple's iPhone Developer Program Portal and get the certificate. You'll also need to download the intermediate certificate as well and install both in Keychain Access.

Next up is registering your iPhone etc as a Testing device. You can have up to 100 devices which is handy for larger teams, especially when there is iPhone 3G, 3GS, iPod touch and iPad to test on.
Then you register your application. Finally, armed with both application id and device id you can generate a Provisioning Profile on the Apple website. This gets downloaded, installed into Xcode and you get to run your App on your iPhone!

The App Store

Unless your are a large company with over 500 employees or a university teaching iPhone App development there are only two ways to distribute your apps.

1. Submit it to the App Store
2. Distribute it by Ad-Hoc Distribution.

Distributing through the App Store is what most people I'd guess want to do. Ad Hoc means you produce a copy for a specified iPhone etc, and can supply it for up to 100 different devices. Again you need to get a certificate so run Keychain Access and generate another Certificate Signing request, then go to the Apple developer portal website and get a distribution certificate. You'll download and install this in Xcode and use it to generate a Distribution Provisioning Profile.

To submit your App to the App Store you'll also need the following:

• A list of descriptive words so it can be found in the App Store.
• Three icons (29 x 29, 57 x 57 and 512 x 512).
• A Launch image that appears while your App is loading.
• A few (1-4) screenshots of your App's screens.
• Contract information.

Then you do the actual submitting to the iTunesConnect website (part of Apple.com), set prices (or is it free) etc. Then, assuming that you've avoided the many ways of getting Apple to reject your App from the App Store, it should appear in a few days.
Here are some of the reasons for rejection but it's not complete, so please read Apple's best practices document:

• It's considered objectionable e.g. pornography.
• It crashes.
• It has a backdoor or is malicious.
• It uses private APIs.

Apple says that they receive 8,500 Apps per week and 95% of submissions get accepted within 14 days. So good luck with your submission and get coding!

By the way, if you decide to include an Easter Egg (surprise screens, hidden content, jokes etc) in your App be sure to let the review team know how to activate it. They won't tell; their lips are sealed. If on the other hand you don't tell them and it comes out, then so might your App from the App Store!

Android Market Vs. Apple App Store

There was a time when we assumed that no mobile app store would be good enough to beat the Apple App Store. Then along came the Android Market, which got off to a sluggish start. Now, with the explosive growth of Android apps, experts aver that the Android Market will soon supersede the Apple App Store.

The Android Market has made remarkable progress with as many as 28,000 new apps in April, 2011, as against the App Store’s 11,000. Analysts now think that Android would be able to surpass Apple by mid-2011.

Here are reasons why the Android Market may have a clear advantage as against the Apple App Store:

Easier to Enter the Android Market

Apple has been known for their extremely stringent rules and regulations for developers desiring to get an app into their App Store. Though they did revise their Developer License Agreement, developers still find it difficult to get their apps approved in the App Store.

Besides this, Apple is not always consistent with their rules and regulations and there are several gray areas as regards app submission to the App Store.

The Android Market, on the other hand, has chalked out clear rules and regulations for app submission and most of these rules are standard and go easy on the censorship issue as well.

Android Market Friendlier

Getting app store approval is an app developer’s dream. Creating an app can be a highly complicated process – the developer spends months working on it. Apple, many developers feel, adopts an unfriendly attitude towards them, curbing their creativity. The company even sets rules on the development tools to be used to develop apps for the Apple iOS.

The Android developer, on the other hand, faces so such opposition for app submission to the Android Market. Openness is the key here and app quality is of utmost importance.

More the Merrier

The Android Market has a simple philosophy – the more the users of their platform and the apps available for the mobile platform, the more money it has the potential to generate.
Picking up gradually, the Android OS has now emerged as the favorite of the masses. Android devices are much more desirable than Apple ones. Correspondingly, Android apps are increasing in number as well.

Android Payment System to Improve

Presently, the biggest problem with the Android Market is that there is only one way to pay for apps – via Google Checkout. But that is expected to change soon, as Google is already planning to create a better user environment, giving both the developer and customer more payment and transaction options.

In-App Advertising

It is a known fact that the Android Market has a much higher number of free apps than the Apple App Store. However, that in no way implies that developers cannot earn with their free apps.
Developers earn a decent amount of money by means of in-app advertising. Google plans to introduce a feature whereby users can make purchases from within apps, thereby generating more revenue for the Android developer.

Conclusion

In conclusion, though the App Store has, at present, about 3 times the number of apps in the Android Market, the latter’s growth definitely deserves mention. We may well be at the threshold of major changes as regards the mobile app stores scene.