Making a decision on which operating system on which to have your app developed takes some consideration. Without doubt the two with most to offer are Apple’s IOS and Google’s Android. But which of the two give the user the best experience and keeps them happily using your app. Let’s take a look!
Volume – The App Store is the clear winner when it comes to volumn, range and diversity. A choice of over 350,000 apps draws a huge audience and gives your business a fighting chance to snatch a peice of the app market pie. The Android Market is not too far behind with over 250,000 apps but it’s important to realize that the Android marketplace is growing at a faster rate than Apple’s App Store. So, the race is by no means won!
Pricing – The Android marketplace wins hands down when it comes to pricing. Over 75% of its applications are free compared to just 33% of Apple’s App Store. So although Android is a smaller marketplace, it has more free apps than the App Store, within 190,000 compared to Apple’s 115,000.
Tablets – There is no contest when it comes to Tablets. If you want to provide a dedicated tablet mobile app and reach users with tablets you need to be on the App Store. With over 65,000 tablet specific apps compared to just 100 in the Android market, Android has a lot of ground to make up.
Quality – The App Store is far more regulared than the Android Marketplace, meaning that the apps tend to be of consistently higher quality. While there are many quality titles in the Android Marketplace, it’s often a case of having to sift through the chaff to get to the wheat.
So while it looks like Apple wins hands down on volumn and quality, their domination in the app marketplace is by no means set in stone. Google’s Android is growing at a phenomenal rate and with the introduction of a less fragramented operating system in Honeycomb, the quality of Android app titles is sure rise. For now, Apple has crossed the winning line but keeping the title may be a challenge during the next twelve months.