There’s no question that 2010 is going to be a big year for Google’s (s goog) Android operating system, which means it’s also going to be competing with Apple’s (s aapl) iPhone for developer attention next year. Apple’s iPhone ecosystem so far has an advantage. Google has some teething problems it needs to resolve..
The competition between these two ecosystems is what prompted me to ask Menlo Park, Calif.-based startup oDesk for a historical comparison of the number of iPhone and Android jobs listed on its marketplace. oDesk is a marketplace that connects freelance developers (and others) with those with jobs for them. I thought it could be a rough indicator of developer interest in the two platforms. oDesk obliged. According to its data, there’s been a slight uptick in the number of Android jobs. iPhone seems to be holding its own. Another data point to note: There are 2,071 iPhone developers listed on oDesk vs. 624 Android developers.
“Apple’s iPhone ecosystem, so far has an advantage.”
Didn’t know that Android is/has an ecosystem already…
Well over 30,000 apps and nearly a dozen devices, I would say Android does have an ecosystem.
If Android apps grows become more and more…android will win!!!!
More PR for oDesk, a notorious lowball outsourcing service.
Om, where did you get the 30k apps number from? Reuters said that Google reports only 16k apps on Android Market. Are there 14k apps via other websites?
I am also thinking that android will become the next big thing. There are still lots of developers and they will win against apple 🙂
I like to think that this is the cloud versus the widget from a development perspective. Are we/consumers/businesses ready for the cloud? The more the answer tends towards no, the better Apple will do in the competition for the hearts and souls of developers.
Google will do fantastic with embedded systems and such. It would be important to categorize those projects according to functionality. What sorts of projects are each platform requiring? My bet is that the groupings will be similar to my initial description.
Excellent article. I definitely agree that the Nexus One is going to be a huge step forward for Google. The one thing that Google needs to focus on is making their developers rich like Apple has. Developers are going to go where the money is and right now its at the apple app store.
From my point of view it is important that the major hardware providers have android phones on ther roadmap. They will push android in order to fight apples iphone.
The Nexus One is now on the German Market since Yesterday and at the moment i dont expect it to be as succesfull as the iPhone was/is. The artical is now 6 Month old…. how is the market share now in america? I thinks that will make the diffrence, is now one buyes the phone no one will develope for it.
Android is not ready, i think, it is not really useable today, there are many problems with java scipt, so i can not read any website, but think it will be a good future, i hope so :-))