Google Android: Unruly, Fragmented Dominance
Depending on your circle of friends and company allegiance, Google’s Android is either a revelation or the enemy – an irreplaceable companion or the weaker, less elegant competitor to Apple’s iOS.
When it released in 2008, critics immediately slammed Android’s selection of applications and user functionality, compared to the friendlier iPhone operating system.
Now, the Android Marketplace is on its way to mirroring the iTunes App Store, with a plethora of games available for multiple devices, popular hits such as Cut the Rope, Fruit Ninja and Zombieville USA, along with more graphically intensive titles like Madden NFL 12, Riptide GP and Shadowgun.
More importantly, Android’s grip on the U.S. market has grown substantially, ballooning to nearly 45 percent as of September 2011, compared to Apple’s healthy 27 percent, according to a recent comScore report.
Despite this success, the platform and its latest incarnation, Ice Cream Sandwich, continue to receive less respect than iOS 5. Some video game publishers, Gameloft specifically, release titles on iOS first, then roll out the Android version weeks later. Others, meanwhile, are Apple exclusive. To that end, you won’t find ChAIR Entertainment’s latest game, Infinity Blade 2, on Android powered smartphones.
IndustryGamers chatted with numerous developers to get their sense of the lay of the land and if Android can continue to dominate globally.
Device fragmentation on Android remains an issue,” said Paul Chen, director of developer relations at Papaya Mobile. “[Apple’s] iOS is a closed and tightly controlled environment where developers know they are creating applications for a specific device. Android is much more fragmented in that there are several devices, each with different screen resolutions, different processing performance and OS revisions.”
“There are more control schemes to think about beyond just touch screen,” said Cedar Hill Games’ Tobyn Manthorpe. “We've run into streaming audio issues, the tiny download and install space on some units that mean we have to break our game into two installs, which in turn means we have to host our own storage space for our second install package, and the strange resolutions that users can be running.”
Wandake Games’ Corey Redlien, agrees. “With iOS, you have a certain baseline of hardware that is constant across all users. On an Android device, performance, screen resolution, aspect ratio and even things like the touch screen's sensitivity, accelerometer resolution and other input sensors can vary greatly from one handset to another,” he noted.
“To effectively develop and QA your game,” Redlien continued, “you need at least some of the major and popular devices to test on, and that can get expensive quickly. Instead of buying a handful of iPod Touches for $200 and an iPad or two, which represent a significant fraction of the iOS ecosystem, you will need to purchase multiple off-contract Android phones, all of which cost the same price or more than an iPad. This often means buying each device at $600 or more.”
"The Android user is actually closer to a gaming company's target market: slightly younger with a reasonably good amount of disposable income and no pesky family to get in the way of them spending it."
To that end, some feel Google has made its OS a bit too customizable, which has led to both developer and consumer confusion.
“The strange thing about Android,” said Manthorpe, “is that hardware manufacturers choose which version to adopt for their machines, normally giving it a little software twist in the process which means there are still some current devices running old versions of the operating system. I'm amazed by the amount of testing and confusion that happens on the Android Marketplace. That shouldn't be a part of a consumer's experience.”
Another issue that plagues Android is monetization. It appears that some users are simply unwilling to pay for apps and in-app purchases compared to iPhone and iPad owners.
“There has never been a strong expectation of getting free anything from Apple,” said Redlien, “so Apple users were primed on the idea of buying content, even before the App Store came into being.”
“Google users,” Redlien continued, “and to a lesser extent, the general Android user base, comes from the opposite perspective. Everything those users have experienced from Google has either been free or very low priced, and they’re not as accustomed to purchasing soft-goods.”
This issue, however, may ultimately fall on Google’s inability to make purchases a seamless experience.
“The payment mechanism and app marketplace on Android aren't as robust or as easy to use,” said Pocket Gems product manager Brian Shih. “Android has less limitations around offer walls and incentivized installs (which improve monetization), but suffers from some weaknesses in Google Checkout as a payment platform when compared to iTunes.”
Paul Chen, though, foresees this improving: “As more developers adopt Google’s in-app billing solution, I see monetization between iOS and Android eventually reaching parity.”
To that end, and despite its debatable problems, Android has quite an upside, starting with its availability on multiple smartphones less expensive than the competition in key locations like China.
“Android will be the dominant platform in emerging markets because it is free and open,” said Chen. “These markets are just now experiencing the transition from feature phones to smartphones. Only Android devices can hit the price points for users that are undergoing this transition.”
As for the technical limitations, Chen feels that Google has made significant strides.
“Google has already released a fragment API (application programming interface) to help developers scale their games across a variety of screen sizes, and announced that they are working with carriers and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) to get Android updates to users faster.”
This ultimately begs the question, who is the typical Android user? More importantly, does Google care about his or her overall happiness?
“The Android user,” said Redlien, “is actually closer to a gaming company's target market: slightly younger with a reasonably good amount of disposable income and no pesky family to get in the way of them spending it.”
“To Apple, the consumer is the customer, and Apple wants the customer happy so that that customer spends more money on both the device and software over the long run.”
“Google, on the other hand, doesn't make money off the device or app sales,” continued Redlien. “It makes most of its money from the advertising sent to the user via the device. As long as the user can get to the Internet and see Google's ads, then Google's making money and is happy. A strong viable app store is, in some ways, counter-productive to that goal.”
“To Google, the consumer is both the customer and the product for its other, more high paying customers, the advertisers. There is a direct conflict of interest between which ‘customer’ matters most, and the consumer isn't necessarily the one who's going to win out.”
“Android users just aren't as interested in surfing to see what's new on the store as much as iOS users are,” added Manthorpe.
Said Redlien, “It will be much harder to make a pure pay-to-download game profitable than free-to-play games with many micro-transaction e-commerce opportunities. While the free-to-play model works with social and some other types of games, it doesn't work well with all game types, and certainly not with full-featured, long-form games. I think it would be very difficult to create a high quality real time strategy or role-playing game solely for the Android system and be profitable, at least not yet.”
With this in mind, Google may not be the only company to make Android a success.
“I think what we'll see,” said Redlien, “is a large player like Amazon, who does not have that conflict of interest, coming in and creating the premium app store ecosystem and device standard for Android. Amazon has the resources, and its incentives and goals are more in line with the consumer as a customer rather than the consumer as the product. Once that happens, either by Amazon or another player in the space, then I think we'll really start to see a second ecosystem explosion similar to the first one Apple initiated three years ago.”
Paul Chen, meanwhile, sees one of Android’s key weaknesses as a strength.
With fragmentation also comes more opportunity. Android is far more open than iOS and gives developers more authority to implement things like billing solutions, virtual currency and incentivized downloads.”
This developer friendly atmosphere, Chen feels, will continue to pay dividends down the road.
“Android will continue to dominate globally, and Google will address the platform's shortcomings over the next year.”
Manthorpe, on the other hand, doesn’t seem nearly as convinced: “I really like knowing that an app is going to run when I buy it.”
That issue aside, he thinks Google will continue to dominate. “As long as they keep making it easier for users to run the basic calling, messaging and time management applications, then they'll keep their market share and the rest is gravy.”
To that end, profits and global reach, not fancy names like Ice Cream Sandwich, appear to be more delicious prospects.
