By some estimates, Android devices account for nearly one-half of U.S. smartphones, while Apple iOS devices cover slightly more than one-quarter. But a new study indicates that third-party developers prefer to create apps for Apple’s platform.
Flurry is a company that helps mobile app developers track and analyze usage. When new projects are created in its Flurry Analytics, platform-specific SDKs are downloaded. The company’s study, based on new project starts for about 50,000 apps during 2011, estimated that Flurry Analytics is used for about a quarter of all apps downloaded from Apple’s App Store or the Android Market. The remainder of December’s figures was estimated, extrapolated from the stats for the first part of the month.
No ‘Recognizable Flagship Device’
Based on that sample, the company found that developer support for Android-based projects dropped by more than a third from the beginning of 2011 to this last quarter.
The specific statistics it found were 37 percent for Android in the first quarter of this year, compared with 63 percent for iOS. Second quarter was 27 percent Android, 73 percent iOS, while in the third quarter Android dropped slightly to 25 percent and iOS rose slightly to 75 percent. The fourth quarter saw the same split as the second — 27 percent to 73 percent. The volume of app starts steadily increased throughout the year, from about 9,000 in first quarter to about 16,000 in this quarter.
The company said that, while the market nearly doubled for both Android and iOS, “we believe key events changed the proportion of support between these two platforms.” It pointed out that, during this time, Apple expanded distribution of iOS devices beyond its U.S.-exclusive deal with AT&T, adding Verizon in February and Sprint in October.
Flurry also noted that the Apple’s successful launches of the iPad 2 and the iPhone…
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