Woes of an Android User
by Kyluke McDougall, 10:44 AM - Monday 21/04/2014Android applications inherently, have nothing wrong them, apart from seriously ignorant businessmen who not only make biased decisions on the fact that the only thing they own is an iPad, make uninformed development decisions because of incorrect facts, such as OS fragmentation, and indoctrination by a clever marketing team a Apple.
Either way, what I really want to talk/rant about, is the blatant disregard for tablet users in the Android ecosystem. It is so incredibly difficult to find decently designed tablet applications these days. I mean, how long have we had tablets around for now?
Even major companies like Facebook have simply allowed Android to stretch out it’s UI window, creating one of the most horrible experiences yet.
These are the guys who give android a bad name and a bad rep.
Google is almost obligated to allow for dynamic resizing and “stretching” of the UI in Android because of the vast amount of different Android phones and tablets which come in may different sizes, screen resolutions and dpi’s (dots per inch is the measurement of screen density which is a reference for how much can fit on a screen) but this is no excuse for laziness and aparant “cost saving”
You should never try and cut down on presentation as this is what most users will judge you and your application by.
This is akin to taking corporate clients out to McDonalds because presentation is not important, only saving money is.
Android even has a set of guidelines in place for tablet UI design. http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/quality/tablet.html which never seem to get adhered to by most development companies.
Some of you may say that development is more i0S focused because of market share but that is no longer true either. Android tablets outnumber the iPad in real world terms, there is no reason to use the excuse that more people are using iOS. Based on statistics released at the end of 2013, the market belongs to Android.
OS market share in global tablet unit shipments in Q4 2013
Android: 61.8%
iPad: 33.9%
Windows: 4.3%
(Source: Strategy Analytics, Jan. 2014)
OS market share in tablet unit sales in 2013 (Jan. to Nov.)
iPad/iOS: 59%
(Source: NPD Group, Dec. 2013)
OS market share in tablet unit sales in Q2 2013
Android: 53% (of which Samsung: 22%, Amazon: 5%; Lenovo: 4%; Acer: 4%; others: 23%)
Apple/iPad: 43%
(source: Canalys, August 2013)
OS market share in tablet unit sales to end users
2012: iOS 52.8%, Android 45.8%, Microsoft 1%, others 0.3
2013: Android 61.9%, iOS 36%, Microsoft 2.1%
(source: Gartner, March 2014)
OS market share in tablet unit sales
2012 (actual): Apple 58%, Android 40%, Microsoft 2%
2013 (estimate): Android 58%, Apple 38%, Microsoft 4%
2014 (forecast): Android 65%, Apple 30%, Microsoft 5%
2015 (forecast): Android 64%, Apple 29%, Microsoft 6%
2016 (forecast): Android 63%, Apple 28%, Microsoft 8%
2017 (forecast): Android 63%, Apple 27%, Microsoft 10%
(source: Canalys, November 2013)
OS market share in tablet unit sales
2012 (actual): Android 52%, iOS 45.6%, Microsoft 0.9%; Other: 1.4%
2013 (forecast): Android 60.8%, iOS 35%, Microsoft 3.4%; Other: 0.8%
2017 (forecast): Android 58.8%, iOS 30.6%, Microsoft 10.2%; Other: 0.4%
(source: IDC, December 2013)
Source: http://tabtimes.com/resources/the-state-of-the-tablet-market
So what exactly is driving all of this?
Businessmen?
