Should I Learn iOS or Android Development?

Should I learn iOS or Android Development?

If you are a member of the cult of Apple, learn iOS development. It is hard to create apps for Android on an Apple computer.

iOS development creates apps that run on Apple devices, which have a large market.

The Apple Appstore makes it an almost exclusive market. You have to code according to their standards and design apps that meet their standards to be allowed to sell through their Appstore.

I could sell apps that run on jailbroken phones.

That's a small subset of the user community, since jailbreaking a phone voids the warranty. And iOS coding is harder given how locked down iOS devices are anyway.

I heard there was an Android Appstore like Apple's.

You could call that Google Play.

What are the advantages of Android development, aside from not having to follow Apple's rules?

Android has a large share of the smartphone market. For many people who are not Apple fanatics, the Android is their first choice.

It certainly isn't going to be the Microsoft phone.

The Android phones are about a third of the market, and they are an even larger market outside of the U.S.

I don't care where someone lives, as long as they pay me for my apps.

Android phones are selling well in the US and the world because of their low cost and versatility. We can expect Android sales to grow faster than the rest of the smartphone market because of that.

I heard the Android is selling more apps than Apple now.

That's because you can generally get an Android app to run on a Microsoft computer or Blackberry phone, but not the iOS.

Who uses Blackberries anymore?

Another advantage of Android development is that it is essentially open source, without licensing fees to Apple.

Free is good enough for me.