iOS or Android App - What's the right choice for the enterprise.

In a highly competitive environment, having a digital presence of the business is an important factor for the success of any business or enterprise. Not only it contributes to your success, but being present digitally with your business also helps businesses to attract and engage a wider audience. It makes it more convenient for the consumers to get connected to your business and fetch any relevant information as and when needed by them.

There are many ways of creating a digital presence for your business, but the most engaging of them all is having a mobile application for your enterprise. Business owners are understanding the importance of having a mobile application and they started to hire dedicated remote developers. 

Mobile apps are quite in trend too and all that’s because the statistics are supporting it. The number of mobile phone users is constantly growing, globally there were approx. 5 billion smartphone users in the year 2019 and the number is expected to reach 5.3 billion by 2021, creating an expanding scope for businesses to get their digital presence to become a reason for their market success. 

So we finally got an understanding of how crucial it is to develop a business application, but the main conundrum arises at this very point. And it is that- which platform is best suitable to display your business’ mobile application? We termed this dilemma as crucial because the decision of selecting the right platform can even alter the result that you were expecting after launching a mobile application. 

You need to evaluate and analyze various factors according to your requirements before investing your resources in any of the platforms. Every business has different requirements which make the decision more subjective. Therefore, the task for business owners becomes more serious, they are required to dig deep and understand the details of their business and gauge the relevance of features provided by each platform. 

The Apple App Store Vs the Google Play store?

The decision of selecting any one platform for developing an application is confusing and most people think to develop their application for both platforms. However, it is not very advisable to develop an application for both iOS and Android together. It is predominantly because of two reasons.

A) Because it can be heavy on your business’ finances. In order to develop applications for both platforms, you are required to hire professional Android-app and iOS-app developers together. This can cost you a lot of money at a single point in time and drain most of your budget.

B) Because this is very risky as it is unpredictable to guess whether your application is going to rock the show or will it be a complete flop. Therefore it is a wise decision to develop your application for one market at a time.

According to the market statistics of 2018-19, the global market share captured by Android was 74.45% and that of iOS stood at 22.85%. Android has a dominating presence in the market over iOS. Although the decision solely does not depend on this factor, there are various other parameters like what is your target audience, what are your goals, etc. that are needed to be scrutinized before making any decision.

To share your burden a bit, we have analyzed and summarized the factors of both platforms that will make it easy for you to decide potently when it comes to developing a mobile application for your business enterprise.

Audience Reach:

There are some regions where the majority of iOS devices can be observed while some others are dominated by Android users. You need to find out where your target audience and you must analyze its geographical significance. To speak more specifically, areas like Western Europe and North America are richly composed of iOS users whereas Latin America, Asia, and Africa witness more Android presence. If you are on a way to target a global audience starting with an Android platform is a wise move. However, for launching an e-commerce or business application iOS might be ideal as well. 

Target Audience:

One of the major factors that are to be considered is to have an idea about your target consumers and their reach to platforms and needs. If you are operating a business that deals with high-end products or services, an ideal audience for your business may share a larger number of iOS users.

Age, education, and gender are also some important factors that may affect your decision. Research shows that iPhone users tend to be more educated than android users. 27% of iOS loyal consumers hold a graduate or a Ph.D. degree whereas the number goes as low as +8% for android users. While throwing lights on gender stats, 53% of males and 50% of females are android users. 

Create a Timeline:

Another essential factor that needs to be considered carefully is the time that you work on your app and when it has to be launched in the market. Does the application need to meet a certain deadline like an event launch etc? It is required to be kept in mind as it directly affects the cost of development.

The More time needed in developing, the higher the development cost goes. The development timeline also depends on many factors like the number of specifications and business types. More features take more time to be installed. Likewise, if the business is a startup and one of a kind then the developer might need a little extra time to understand the project closely and it is valid too because your app is going to be your representative in the digital world.

Generally, as iOS is not open-source, it comparatively takes less time to develop an app for this platform than for Android. The flexibility of Android makes app development a more time-consuming process. 

Average Revenue:

Needless to mention, that you do not just desire your app to be popular you also expect to be profitable and revenue-generating as well. And as Android shares a larger piece of the pie of global market share, it is assumed that the revenue generated through android application overtakes the iOS device revenue. But the fact is nothing close to it, in 2016 iOS experienced 82% of revenue growth and it’s still making 64% more revenue as compared to the Android store. 

Other facts that must be looked upon if you wish to monetize your business app are in-app purchases or consumers’ paying capacity. iOS users are more likely to pay on apps than Android users. To support it by figures, in 2017 Apple app store generated $38.5 billion revenue from mobile applications and Google Play Store stood behind with revenue of $20.1 billion.

Development Cost:

The development cost of a mobile application depends largely upon the complexity and scope of the project. The more complex the project, the larger the budget will require to be. There is nothing as certain as any one of the development platforms needs a lesser budget. The cost of development differs from the OS version and the number of devices you need to get covered. It is an indubitable fact that it will demand more time, money, and other resources to develop an app for more versions. 

Conclusion: 

The base of all your decisions including the one about selecting a platform to develop a business application should come from a business point of view. You need to classify each platform on features like which platform satisfies your pockets or gives ideal features or overall better consumer experience. But, ultimately your decision must depend on how your business exactly works. If you operate a project that deals with a high-income generating class then having an iOS app is no harm for your business. On another hand, if you wish to reach a broader market share and want to monetize via advertisements, then what’s better than an Android. 

Both Android and iOS platforms combinedly cover 97% of the smartphone market, therefore, having an application becomes an ideal approach for enterprises to promote their products and services and generate more potential consumers. Many businesses overlook the significance of having a well-designed and well-functional application and initiate to develop it in-house to save their financial resources. However, they need to understand that the more important it is to have an application, the more important it is to have the application well-made and designed functionally. To ensure its functionality, businesses should look and hire dedicated Mobile App Developers in India. Professional developers ensure that your application carries all the necessary features and is developed under budget.