How to Choose Between iOS and Android for Your 1st Mobile App

How to Choose Between iOS and Android for Your 1st Mobile App

About iOS, Android and Market Share

There are over 159.8 million users of smartphones in the USA and  more than 130 million users in the EU5 countries (Spain, Germany, Italy, France and UK). Add here users from Canada and from other European countries, Asia regions multiple by constantly growing number of smartphone users and you will see how many clients you can reach by developing custom mobile app for your company.

Let’s start from the statistics and look at some diagrams that I and Nielsen have prepared for you.

Top US Smartphone OS. Aug-Oct, 2013

EU4+ Eastern Asia3: Mobile Operating System Market Share, 2013

How to Choose Between The Platforms

When you want customers to pay for your app:

Choose iOS. Apple taught their customers to pay for software, music, movies and have more than 100+ million active users who entered their credit cards details in Apple IDs. This is the army of prospects who were trained to buy professionally ;) By the way, such army is the “golden dream” of Android, because this OS has initially “freeware mentality”.

—

Google is meant to be free for users, and this is why Android is the most widespread OS yet.

—

When you want to try mobile marketing in action (small budget):

Choose iOS. Starting with your first app is better with iOS, because it’s cheaper to build an app for a certain iDevice than for the whole bunch of Android devices. If you are not going to sell anything in your app then you should still remember about Apple’s users who have stronger buying habits than others.

When you want to try mobile marketing in action (OK budget):

Choose Android or both. If your goal is to reach as many clients as you can then start with Android. If you want to sell something in your app then iOS. If you want to reach big audience and sell then take both!

When you want to spread your app as widely as possible:

Choose Android. There are more Android devices on the planet, and it’s the fact. Google is meant to be free for users, and this is why Android is the most widespread OS yet.

When you develop Saas (Software as a service):

Choose both. Your goal is to spread your service far beyond a Web browser. This time, it does not matter how many people are ready to buy something in app, because the only thing you should care about is how to give an opportunity to use your service on any device and a Web browser.

—

Apple taught their customers to pay for software, music, movies and have more than 100+ million active users who entered their credit cards details in Apple IDs.

—

To Sum Up

Every company has their own specifics of a market, so I suggest you always discuss with your app development company and your marketers what mobile platform to choose. 

Leave your comments, email me or catch me on Twitter at @ivanzaichuk 

by Ivan Zaichuk, Founder & CEO of IvZ Solutions