Apple vs Android in the Enterprise

[J. Landman Gay]

On 9/15/11 6:01 PM, J. Landman Gay wrote:

> I was just reading some articles today about Android's prominence and
> promise, and how, given Apple's long time to market, some companies are
> choosing more often to deploy first on Android.

A couple of other thoughts. I've been mulling this over for some time.

Android apps typically are much cheaper than iOS apps. I found a game I 
liked, and it cost $5 on iOS and $2 on Android. Android users don't 
spend money, and given the piracy issues and lower price you can charge, 
iOS apps may end up being more profitable in the long run. On the other 
hand, there are or will be more Android users, so maybe numbers will 
make up for that. I don't know.

Android users seem to be far more brutal in their reviews. Both 
platforms have their share of users who don't read the description or 
the docs and then mark down an app for not doing something it wasn't 
written to do. But it seems that many perfectly fine Android apps get 
trashed more often in reviews for stupid things. It can hurt a company's 
reputation. In particular, Android users get angry if an app requires 
permissions they don't understand. I've seen apps get marked down to one 
star because they required phone permissions. Users thought the app was 
snooping on them, when actually you need to set phone permissions to 
allow the phone to ring on incoming calls. I don't think that happens so 
much in the App Store.

Apple's rigid oversight is a pain and just their developer provisioning 
process makes me crazy. I get mad. But it does provide some protections 
and consistency we don't have on Android, and that may be worth the trouble.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com