[rbarooah]

They did put the effort in to overcome those issues, only to discover that for every 80 iOS users they had 1 Android user, so they concluded that continuing to do the work wasn't justified because there was a lack of demand. If they'd had comparable demand from Android users, they'd have continued to invest.

[igravious]

But if they had a crappy product for Android is it any wonder that their uptake ratio was so out of kilter? If they had platform feature parity at launch your argument would be valid but they didn't so you cannot draw the conclusion you have drawn.

[rbarooah]

It's not really my conclusion - it's the conclusion from the TWN piece. That said, even though it's not a controlled experiment, the fact that they didn't have feature parity doesn't completely invalidate their experience. 80-1 is a high ratio particularly for a free product that people presumably would have expected to improve over time if they had been interested.

See Zaheer's comment on this thread too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4991585

[garuda]

Android is Open Source, so it belongs to everyone. Content producers need to do their part alongside developers to make it great, even if that means putting in more investment than supporting a propriety platform like iOS.

[eropple]

> Content producers need to do their part alongside developers to make it great

Uh...why? Why should they "do their part" for a platform where they have no users and don't see a likely growth of them?

I am an Android user and developer, but I am also realistic.

[rbarooah]

I doubt that would change things.

iOS users are not price sensitive and Apple doesn't make any pretense that content is free. People who buy into the Apple world are choosing to buy into an ecosystem where they are going to have to buy content from a collection of proprietary 'Stores'. Apple is well known for the iTunes store and the App store so it's a conscious choice for their users.

Most Android devices (obviously not the highest end ones) are sold on price, and Google as a brand is known for providing free, advertising supported content. It's no great surprise that people who choose that ecosystem expect to get free stuff and don't want to be buying a lot of digital content.

If they'd wanted that they'd have bought an iOS device.