iOS or Android: Which is Better for your Business App Development?

When you ask people that between iOS and Android, which platform will they choose for launching their business apps, you will receive contradictory answers. Some will say that iOS is better than Android while others will differ. In this confusing scenario, it is better to evaluate it all by yourself and launch your business app on an appropriate platform. Let us make a brief research on the subject to make the matters clearer! Hopefully, this will help you take a firm decision!

The selection is dependent on business requirements, scope, customer base, time to market and long-term mobile strategy. When you know the points to make the comparison, you can easily choose the perfect operating system to develop your business app.

1. Country-Specific Visitors: Using a tool for web analytics, you could break down the traffic of your website. Pinpoint the operating system from where the largest number of people are accessing your website. Please remember that the objective behind the development of your business app is to tap the biggest segment of your current as well as potential customers.
2. Demographics: At present, Android is holding the largest share worldwide among all other operating systems utilised for mobile app development. Especially, Android has a huge presence in the smartphone market of the developing countries.On the contrary, market surveys have proved that iOS is preferred by the people of developed nations. The preference is related with the economic set up of this part of the world where the income and purchasing capacity of people, in general, are higher than the people of developing nations. So, if you aim to target the high-end consumer base, develop your business app on iOS. Else, if you want to tap the largest number of customer base irrespective of income categories, go for Android app development.
3. Screen sizes and resolutions: The brand Apple is the single organisation to develop the operating system (iOS) for its mobile device (iPhone). On the other hand, Google has shared the right with other companies so that they can develop their own smartphones and run the Android OS on them. As a result, the smartphone devices developed by different companies vary in their screen sizes and resolutions thereby increasing the complexities. Take for example, after developing a mobile app on Android OS, the developer must take care that it fits in with the screen sizes and resolutions of different smartphones.
4. OS Version Discrepancies and its Impact on Marketing: There are fewer actively used versions of Operating Systems in iOS thereby demanding a lower operational cost to maintain and update an app. Of all the users of iPhone, 98% currently use the latest versions of iOS. Thus, the decision to develop a business app on a particular version of OS is rather easier to make in case of the iOS platform.
   Contrary to this, only 0.5% users of Android devices are using the latest OS version namely Nougat 7.1. Whereas, a major percentage of Android users are still using the Android Lollipop version which was released way back in 2014. Android Lollipop 5.1 is used by 23.3% users whereas 8.7% users are using Android Lollipop 5.0 version. Around 31.2% users are using the Marshmallow 6.0. Thus we see that the percentage of users using the latest Android OS version is actually very small. If you are considering to launch your business app on Android, then you need to control its various versions, go for an increased number of in-app testing and implement a greater number of bug fixes.

Generally, the renowned enterprises launch their business mobile apps for both the OS platforms. As they have the capacity to afford, they tap the market via both iOS and Android OS platforms. On the other hand, the startups or mid-sized companies launch their business apps for a particular OS platform. They choose the platform on the basis of the number of target users accessing their business app. Based on the return of investment and the popularity of the app, the mid-sized companies then decide whether to explore the potentiality of the other platform as well! You could also follow this method!

If you make a good profit from your first try, you could reinvest the money to launch the app on the alternative platform. In this way, you could explore the benefits of both the platforms.
Ideally speaking, as a business enterprise, one should maintain a mobile app that flawlessly caters to a majority of the entire base of the potential users.

Still unable to take a decision? Discuss the matters with a reputed mobile app development agency. They will help you take the appropriate decision.