Android or iOS App Development: Which is Best for Your Business?
- Mobile
- December 5, 2019
Choosing the platform for your mobile application is a major step towards its success. A majority of the population is working upon the digital devices and is a huge market for the organizations to serve.
But, the population is diversified and distributed across a number of platforms on their devices and hence makes it important for the organizations to choose which platform to target and gain a larger market share for themselves.
Two of the leading platforms upon the mobile devices of the people around the world are Android and iOS. They constitute the largest share of the market leaving all other operating systems aside.
The recent statistics show that Android seems to be the most popular and tremendously used mobile operating system in the world with around 2.5 billion monthly active users. It makes it being used in around 87% of the mobile devices being used in the world.
While iOS keeping no away from the race had a market share of around 13.% making it the second most popular and highly used mobile operating system in the world which seems to be growing continuously.
The latest versions of the iOS platform are gaining popularity and continuously contributing to the growth of iOS.
Things to Consider Before Developing an App
A number of organizations look forward to going ahead with an application for both the platforms.
But before going ahead with the development, organizations have to keep up with the following conditions:
- The application has to be beta tested. The market may like your application or may not. In case it doesn’t, going for both the platforms at the same time would be a setback for the organization.
- For the organization in their expansion phase, it’s important to manage their finances and keep them intact without any leakage. The cost of app development upon both the platforms would incur an extra amount to be invested in upon the various aspects of application development.
Read also: 13 Things You Should Know Before You Invest in Your Next Mobile App Idea!
Factors to Consider Before Choosing The Right Platform for App Development
Choosing the right one may be a tough choice when you don’t know your market. When you know it, it’s not very difficult to take the right path and succeed. The choice may depend upon the given factors:
Target Audience
Finding the target customers and segregating the right potential customers from the rest is the first step to choose the right one for your organization.
The right platform is the one that has the largest number of the target market for your product or your service to serve and hence lead you to success.
Although Android may have a larger share of the market but still may not have the largest share of the target market in comparison to iOS. Although the size of the market matters, the size of the target market still matters more.
Read also: Tips on How to Identify the Target Audiences for Mobile App
App Downloads
Android has a larger market than iOS and hence has a greater number of downloads than iOS. Android hosts a number of advertisements on its platform and hence, raises more money from them making a huge profit.
This may seem to be a fair point in the decision to make choice but is limited to circumstances and areas related to the stream of the application service.
Average Revenue
The motto of every business is to earn profits after all. A large number of users may not bring in the desirable profits that a small number of users may bring in who have a better wallet size.
Therefore, numbers are not the only game to play in the market, there’s a lot more. Android had an 82% increase in its revenue in 2016 but still lags behind iOS in the profits.
Read also: Android or iOS – What Should Be Your Choice When You Have Limited Marketing Budget
App Development Cost
While going through several factors, development cost plays an important role in the selection of the platform for application development.
Organizations need to verify and see if the development cost of the platform is worth the market they’re looking forward to serving. The organizations need to seek revenue and returns and only then go ahead with the development.
App Update
Both the platforms release new updates at least once in a year. The impact of the updates upon the application users and the application downloads is often neglected but is of high importance.
This can highly affect the success of the application and the service you look forward to providing with it.
Read also: How Would You Know When Your App Needs A Major Update
Advantages of Android App Development
- Android has a wider community base and hence has got wider assistance for the users as well as developers.
- A number of platforms serve to Android due to its large number of users and hence is easy to design and ready to go templates designed.
- Android apps are easy to use and release out in the market with good marketing support and broad strategies due to their abundance and highly compatible platforms.
Disadvantages of Android App Development
- All Android devices are highly different and each device is developed with different things in focus.
- Android applications fail to keep up with the different features and aspects of different devices if are not developed properly keeping the points in focus.
- Android apps go through a complex process of testing due to the high variations in the devices and versions. This makes the testing process time-taking, recurring, and costly.
Advantages of iOS App Development
- iOS has a higher stratum of users as their market and hence has a larger inflow of the revenue compared to Android.
- iOS is specially designed for Apple devices only and hence, can leverage the features and mobile prospects efficiently and effectively.
Disadvantages of iOS App Development
- Apple store has strict and intact guidelines for the release of an iOS application at the Apple store. Hence the applications have higher chances of rejection due to a number of issues.
- iOS applications once developed have a complicated process to be customized and have restrictions.
Both platforms have got their own benefits:
- iOS applications are good in revenue generation.
- iOS applications are less complicated to develop.
- Serves a smaller market but with larger wallet size.
While…
- Android has a huge market share worldwide.
- A larger share of the market and hence a bigger community.
- Have good support and better user interface support.
The Verdict
Choosing the right platform for your business and service is very important but is not a matter of debate as both of them have their own pros and cons.
The services, as are delivered, define the success of an organization and to deliver them, the application thus made should be the right fit for the target market. A number of organizations have been hustling around to find a solution to come up with a decision and will keep hustling.
If it was one application that was perfect, why would we need the second one? The right application is not the one that is right but the one which suits the requirements at the best.
Android has a different purpose to serve while iOS applications have a different purpose to serve. The target markets are different and hence the competition is in a different league.
The organizations, rather than deciding upon the better platform, should determine the requirements and accordingly choose the platform for the application development.
The other factors, however, are equally important to decide the platform like the cost of development, time to develop the application, and revenue-profit ratio. It is said that Android applications take 30%-40% more time to develop an application at an average.
Therefore, the brief consideration of all these factors and issues together will finally lead to the right application for your organization or service. The bottom line is to serve the audience with the right service at the right platform.
FAQs About iOS or Android App Development
There are many factors you should consider for choosing an app development platform for your business app like target audience, app downloads, app development cost, data security, desired features, etc.
There are some reasons like the iOS app has a clean and clutter-free user interface, secure and encrypted, less development time and price, US users are more likely to have an Apple device, and many more to list down.
If you want an app for iOS and Android both without less code change, then you can go with cross-platform technologies such as React Native, Flutter, Ionic, PhoneGap, Xamarin, etc.
