If I were to seriously attempt to commercialize the toy apps I build for my kids/family I'd go iOS first easily. People with Apple devices are far likelier to pay, and Android development is, in my view, an inferior experience (although Kotlin makes it marginally less so these days).

This may have been historically true, but our internal data shows us that starting early 2017, people in tier 1 countries were equally likely to pay and have comparable LTV on both platforms.

And if you also going to launch in EU/Australia/Canada, you will have a nearly 50-50 split of ios and android users on a platform neutral app.

So the classical logic of implementing on iOS first doesn't really apply anymore. Now its more, implement first on the platform you are comfortable with but don't forget about the other platform because there is a equal amount of money to be made there...

PS: Data excludes low end iOS and android devices. (< SE, old iPads/iPods, old and cheap android devices). These devices have extremely low conversion on both platforms anyway.

The logic still applies.

1. Start with platform you're most comfortable with. 2. Iterate on product until you have a winning formula 3. Replicate on 2nd platform to double revenues

Building is a lot easier than identifying what to build, better to speedily experiment on one platform.

In my opinion the new logic is build in React Native (unless your app fits in the 10% of use cases that won't work well with RN), then deploy to both at once. We have had excellent results.

My take is that RN is great for demo apps or simple UIs, but I would not choose it for a production app where performance matters (ie. using camera, audio, custom controls, platform-specific SDKs, multi-threading, etc). You're definitely going to do heavy lifting in native code, and a hybrid app quickly becomes a mess. Dealing with multiple environments and super slow build times in Xcode will seriously slow down development cycles.

IMO RN is no exception to the Simple vs Easy trade-off [1] Not to mention using RN gives FB a legal blank check from your company [2]

[1] http://chrisfrost.com/wp-content/uploads/SimpleVsEasy-478x51...

[2] https://medium.com/@raulk/if-youre-a-startup-you-should-not-...

That article is out of date. As of September 2017, FB has re-licensed React under the MIT open source license and dropped the patent stuff.

I don't think you contradicted anything I said. I would say special camera apps, multi-threading etc. are not needed that often.

As for slower build times, that is the beauty of RN. Building is not needed most of the time just an initial build and a rebuild every time some of the base configurations change or you are creating code outside of RN.

> fb dropped patent stuff

Ah, thanks for the update, glad they did that

> are not needed that often

Right - statistically most apps are probably throwaway code for hackathons or demos. However, I'd venture to say that >50% of serious apps will end up needing performance boosts from native code.

> Building is not needed most of the time

You need to rebuild every time you make a change in native code (obj-c or swift). Hot reloading is cool for JS changes, but bloat from RN becomes a nightmare when debugging obj-c or swift issues.

React Native is great for apps, and if it's a game, just use Unity. They're building up their internal CI infrastructure and it works better every month.

Tbh, I'm not sure how many use cases don't fit either React Native or Unity, I'd practically never choose to do an app another way these days.

I rather use native UI code + C++ for business logic, use Qt or Xamarin than even bother with React Native.

I'd say RN won't work well in 99% cases.

I'd say you are probably using a lot more React Native apps than you realize right now.

Could you elaborate?

I wish everyone downvoting you would at least state their problem with your post

That's interesting. I am admittedly using my recollection of data I saw a year or so back. Has the fraction of iOS users who pay gone down or the fraction of Android payers gone up?

Conversion on android has gone up, along with users on high-end android devices. At the same time CPI on iOS has gone up.

Speculation: iOS users may be running into app fatigue and just don't want to install new apps anymore.

Have you thought about writing up your findings? I haven't seen any report break out the data like that before.

Is this referring to free apps, paid apps, or both? I've had a paid app on both stores for about six years now and in my experience the iOS version makes about 10x the Android version every year. Many other developers have reported a similar discrepancy.

Sorry should have clarified, I am taking about freemium apps , both subscriptions and IAPs. Don't have data on paid apps.

Also I am talking about app that are well monetized and advertised so you have an level comparison instead of chart positions giving and sustaining a significant lead on one platform just by some fluke.

Edit: s/comparable LTV/comparable ROI(~= LTV-CPI)

You will have equal ROI, with the LTV being slightly lower on android but so too will the acquisition cost... overall profit being the same.

But would you really setup a CI process to automatically build that app? (and one that'll probably cost you at least a 100$ a month)

I would. Every time. I've been happy with bitrise if people are looking for mobile CI alternatives: https://www.bitrise.io/

Bitrise looks very nice for mobile apps. And it is open source https://www.bitrise.io/cli Are people interested in if we ingrate https://github.com/bitrise-io/bitrise in GitLab Runner so it works with GitLab CI?

We are happy to discuss it in more detail! DM me on twitter @birmacher

Awesome, I just followed you from https://twitter.com/sytses and I think I need a follow back before we can DM

Bitrise has been great for us at work as well, but we're beginning to investigate Microsoft's CI platform since we build web/desktop apps as well, which aren't a first class citizen in Bitrise.

Fwiw: We also wish there was a way to publish test/linting results (you can make it an artifact, but it won't load assets, so you're stuck zipping and downloading or publishing to your own managed Web server)

Pretty much most larger apps/agencies do development for both platforms. iOS usually gets a bit of a higher priority, but Android is just too big to ignore.

Solutions that support both are thus more popular and better idea - but Apple obviously is using all kinds of tactics to discourage development for competing platform. Even buying companies and shutting down their Android (TestFlight is another example).

It's silly to think Apple buying Buddybuild is to discourage development for other platforms for the reason you stated, there are plenty of competitors to both TestFlight and Buddybuild. They bought these two companies because they want to enhance their own developer tools.

Yeah, I might have worded that poorly - buying Buddybuild almost certanly wasn't to interfere with Android development.

Immediately killing all Android related functionality is to discourage that development though.

I don't believe that at all. The obvious reason why they discontinued Android support is because Apple isn't interested in continuing the existing B2B business. They're interested in the technology and the team and they're likely to integrate it into their own developer tools and offer them for free.

Why would Apple invest resources into making developer tools for other platforms? What's the real upside if Buddybuild continued as is and they tried to scale it up? Hundreds of millions in revenue per year? That's a drop in the bucket. Buddybuild's value is strategic, not because it was going to make a financial difference to Apple.

Surely Apple are throwing away a lot of the value of what they just bought; does profiting from that harm their own developer tools. IMO that seems almost impossible, the only harm is to protect their eco-system from competition; ergo the reason to stop supporting other eco-systems is to harm the competition?

Couldn't they fork the project, keep everything but the name for themselves and set a single guy on maintenance; wouldn't that enhance their own developer tools just as much?

I'm an Android fan/Apple hater but I could never recommend anything other than going iOS first for any business interesting in maximizing profit. I actually like to push react native just so clients won't completely ignore Android when see the cost of porting. But really, really I will push PWAs over apps whenever they are suitable.

Yes, iOS first is still extremely common.

First, but not exclusively. As a long time complainer about the iOS-first mindset I used to keep a spreadsheet actually of how long the Android versions of apps were delayed.

I don't recall many iOS and iOS only apps. There was just generally and Android time-tax that Android users had to wait through.

I made a good career out of selling late-to-the-party native android ports for companies.

Its pretty low key lucrative too:

- iOS development is crowded, Android devs are more scarce and there are too many unrelated skillset paths to build a native android app.

- The APIs are already developed by the time you get there.

- The designs have already happened, for the most part. Its no longer a fact finding mission and instead a pure implementation mission.

- You make more money and have to deal with less company-wide fires in the process.

- Nobody bothers you. You get to be on autopilot.

- And its also pretty pointless. Most company's android apps are just a checkbox, store presence to show they haven't neglected it. Nobody is going to actually download it.

It was fun for a while, I got my funds up.

“Can you make it look like the iOS app?”

my G!! lol....if Kotlin was available back then, I definitely would've jumped on that ship. Now it seems mobile isn't really viable in terms of money though

I saw the writing on a the wall in time

There is a ceiling you can make doing mobile dev, and companies don't make a return from pursuing it

React Native solves the needs of most companies' apps on both platforms, they'll figure it out all pretty quickly at the same time

Apple does, obviously.

Except they don't. 1) Apple Music for Android 2) iTunes for Windows.

Those are the only exceptions. Everything else the make for iOS is exclusive.

We put off an Android version of our app for nearly two years to concentrate development on the iOS version, and the numbers we get from our Android version - less than 10% of the market and 1% of the subscriptions - prove that was the right thing to do. We'd drop Android completely as the wasteland it is if not for the PR optics of having it.

That doesn't really prove anything. You may or may not have first mover advantage if you sit for two years.

Putting off the Android version for two years is a great way to have your potential Android audience move on to your competitors and squander any marketing and networking effect.

Noone remembers your app exists after a few months, why did you expect anyone to give a damn about your product after two whole years?!

Our app is in the top 10 grossing apps in the Apple App Store and we market it aggressively. Android users are just not as lucrative or numerous as Apple ones.

During that two year delay we made the iOS version a quality product instead of having our attention divided by another platform that delivers less than 10% of the userbase. It was the right move.

What does "top grossing 10" on App Store have to do with anything? Do you think Android users regularly check out Apple App store to look for your software? :P

Your attitude is very common among iOS developers and it's the main reason why you only have 10% of userbase on Android - companies that actually understand their audience have no issues reaching wide users and profits on both platforms.

If you deliver a subpar submarketed product on App store you will fail. If you deliver a subpar submarketed product on Play Store you'll fail as well. It seems you did the second thing.

Actually, the apps are virtually identical, except for platform UI differences to cater to each group. The Android audience is just not as valuable, dollar-wise, as iOS regardless of market share. Our subscription numbers prove it.