Which Mobile App Platform Should a Startup Focus on?

As much as startups want to launch their applications across all mobile platforms, it’s often more realistic to focus on just one. But which one? The iPhone has the biggest numbers in terms of both apps and app buyers, whereas Android usage stats are rocketing.

What’s the Best Reason to Go With Apple?

Android and iPhone users download the equal number of apps every month and spend virtually the same amount of time using the apps. However, iPhone users are downloading more paid applications, with 50% of users purchasing at least one paid application a month compared to 21% of Android users and 24% of webOS users.
This is one of the strongest arguments for why the iPhone is the best platform to go with. So yes, the money is in Apple apps, but considering that app developers are starting to make equivalent money with Android.

Difference between Apple and Google as a Business Partner

Google makes most of their ad revenue by driving traffic to Google-owned websites. So the more apps Google can get on their websites, the more page views and resultant ad revenue they generate.
Yes, that’s good for Google. But since mobile apps sale increases the amount of page views Google can generate, the company is going to be far less concerned with charging or limiting app developers in the way that Apple does. There are far fewer barriers to app developers collaborating on the Android platform compared to the walled-garden of Apple.

Tech startups often have to plan for long-term economic growth in ways that the current market says is not yet possible and when it comes to long-term growth, Google Android is going to limit those possibilities far less than Apple.

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