I tend to agree that Android will have less success than the superficial analysis and industry hype suggests. Here’s what my friend wrote to me when I asked for his opinion on how much Android will actually benefit from the iPhone app ecosystem and the fact that a lot of app porting onto Android is starting to happen.

And why am I so steadfastly defending Apple?  I just think that they have created a perfect strategy which competitors will find every day more and more difficult to counter.  By voicing my opinions here I am hoping to wake up the sleeping giants such as Nokia to see where their real competition is and that the current trend will probably lead into Apple developing a ‘Microsoft-like’ position in the industry within five years.

“There are several problems with Android development:

1. Quality control. It’s possible to insert all kinds of malicious code into an Android app. It can also fail to work at all and be the basis of fraud. Whereas the Apple store is like Wal-Mart (which, btw, has 50k SKUs), Android is like a flea market, buyer better be really careful. It might work for some, but my bet is that having a purchasing manager vet products creates a better shopping experience for most users.

2. Apps are content. The vast bulk of the apps on the Apple store are more art than function. They wrap a new form of entertainment in a package that can be sold (e.g. fart apps). In a content model, it makes little sense to spend money on porting. I don’t think there will be much porting except for large games. Also most developers are small and not interested in hedging.

3. Apps have short lifetimes (sometimes as short as a few days). A developer is better off working on new apps rather than trying to milk a secondary user base using a different SDK. Many apps are seasonal too. Notice that there will be a 2x volume increase in apps added in December for the Christmas rush (my guess is 20k apps went online in Dec on the iTunes App Store.) The temporal nature of apps means that there are no such things are “best apps” without a time qualifier. In other words “best app now” or “best app of November”. Think of music. Is there such a thing as “best songs” or “best movie”. To the extent that they are critically acclaimed, it means nothing in the marketplace. Old is forgotten. Developers know this and are constantly trying to catch waves of popularity. This is due to the viral nature of promotion. If there was a hot app for December, do you think it will make sense to move it to Android in January. The kids will have moved on, and they will laugh at the dork who still has not gotten it on his Droid. Said Droid user will not bother, thus killing the demand for a port.

4. I took the Stanford course on iPhone development and plan on building a few apps. My impression is that the depth and breadth of the iPhone SDK far exceeds what the Java model of Android. A large set of apps simply will not port due to the limitations or differences between the platforms.

5. Fragmentation. Enough said.

It strikes me that with no restrictions, Android should, by now, have far more apps than the iPhone has. With no barriers to entry, there should be a lot more enthusiasm. The fact that not only is the Android store smaller, it is also growing more slowly and the download growth rate is also slower. All this indicates to me that developers are better served by the iPhone store.”