HTW2011: Thai Tran - Android: Opportunities and challenges
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Thai Tran, CEO of Lightbox, discusses opportunities and challenges with Android development. Lightbox has had over 500k Android app downloads but development is more difficult than iOS due to fragmented devices, lack of tools, and testing challenges. The Android Market is also key to success but difficult to get featured. Better libraries, tools, and tablet apps are still needed to maximize Android's potential.
HTW2011: Thai Tran - Android: Opportunities and challenges
- 1. Android: Opportuni-es & Challenges Thai Tran Co-‐founder & CEO Lightbox [email protected] Twi=er: @thait www.lightbox.com
- 2. About Lightbox • Mobile photo sharing service • More than half million app downloads from Android Market • “Android first” strategy – We’ve explicitly decided to build for Android before any other mobile plaJorm
- 3. Android vs. iPhone adop-on 150M+ devices 550k+ acPvaPons per day From Mary Meeker’s Oct 2011 Internet Trends presentaPon Sources: Gartner, Morgan Stanley Research
- 4. Android is a global phenomenon China 50% USA market share 45% market share Europe 22% market share Sources: comScore Sept 2011 US & EU5 mobile report, Morgan Keenan Dec 2010 China report
- 5. Android fragmenta-on Android OS distribuPon Android device distribuPon Evo 4G Eclair (2.1) 11% 14% Galaxy S II 8% Xperia Arc 6% Gingerbread (2.3) 41% Froyo (2.2) 43% Gingerbread is almost one year old, Lightbox is used on 190+ but is installed on less than half of different Android devices Android devices Source: Lightbox usage data for Oct 2011
- 6. Android tablets not successful so far… • Less than 3% of Lightbox’s Honeycomb (3.0) usage comes from tablets • Causes of low adopPon: Android OS distribuPon – Didn’t launch with compelling media features – Not many high quality Android tablet apps due to poor developer tools & lack of device seeding – Android tablets priced in same range as iPad
- 7. …but the Amazon Kindle Fire is coming • Ships with Amazon books, music, and movies • Priced at < $200 • 16M Kindles vs. 29M iPads shipped so far – Kindle Fire rumored to have 250k pre-‐orders in first week • But US only and they forked Android (2.x)
- 8. Developing on Android • Android’s developer tools are less mature than iOS’s – Have to hand crai XML and write a lot of boilerplate code to build Android user interfaces – Standard widgets not as polished & few UI frameworks – Many poorly documented APIs • Don’t recommend using cross-‐plaJorm development tools such as Titanium • Avoid directly using hardware likely to vary between Android devices such as the camera – Leverage other Android apps instead (via “intents”)
- 9. Tes-ng your Android app Buy Borrow Beta test Your developers should have Android apps can be installed The Android Market has no a handful of Android devices via email, so you can easily human approvers, so you of different form factors. test in a phone store. can distribute beta versions prior to launch.
- 10. Android Market: Gatekeeper to success Gekng featured on All of the press the Android Market = 7X coverage of Lightbox Bump from coverage in Bump from gekng featured on the Lightbox downloads per week
- 11. Tips for ge_ng your app featured • Build a high quality app specifically for Android • Add Android tablet support • Reach out to the Android developer advocates at Android events and on Google+ +Nick Butcher (London) +Richard Hyndman (London) +Sparky Rhode (Munich)
- 12. Android opportuni-es: We need… • Be=er Android libraries – UI frameworks: “jQuery for Android” – High performance image processing • Be=er Android developer & tesPng tools – Visual interface builder tool (like in iOS) – Automated tesPng across hundreds of devices • Android tablet apps, especially games
- 13. Q&A [email protected] Twi=er: @thait www.lightbox.com