With all of the hype surrounding the Droid lately, you would think developers would be jumping at the opportunity to develop for Google’s Android platform, but apparently that’s not the case for some.
According to Reuters, Gameloft’s finance director Alexandre de Rochefort doesn’t have a lot of faith in Google’s platform right now:
“We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like … many others.”
Or at least not as much as he has in Apple’s:
“It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue.”
Rochefort goes on to state that the company is selling 400 times more games on the iPhone than on the Android, and that iPhone games accounted for 13 percent of Gameloft’s revenue last quarter.
Although Rochefort claims that Android’s app store is to blame, you still have to take into account the rather small number of capable Android-running devices out there. The Droid is just the first device of many of its kind to come that will utilize Android, so we have to give it some time before we jump to any conclusions. From a business standpoint, however, it’s easy to understand where Gameloft is coming from. They have to go where the money is at, and at this point in time, it’s Apple’s App Store.
As a former Android user (I had a MyTouch 3G but very quickly grew tired of Android for various reasons – some of the supposed advantages of Android are actually negatives) I have to agree – the Android Market is a complete MESS. It’s especially bad since the bar for entry is so much lower. Android users like to tout how open the market is and how they don’t have to worry about Apple’s approval process but that approval process is there for a reason. It helps keep apps that are complete trash out. It helps keep apps that are mining data out. It raises the bar for what good mobile apps should be. Apple’s approval process can be improved, there’s no question about that but I would much rather have it than no approval process at all. Take a look at the Android Market and you’ll find the same developers submitting dozens of identical apps. If all you want are ’sexy girl pics’ apps that show you the same 5 photos while reading your address book & browsing history in the background, and you want Family Guy soundboard apps, the Android Market is the place to be. I’ve already experienced apps that spam. Apps with banner ads and ones that cause the browser to open (ah, multitasking!) to display advertisements at me. I haven’t run into that on the iPhone yet. Why not? Apple prevents it. I prefer that.