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      07-21-2012, 04:57 PM   #26
mrbrett
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Drives: 2018 M4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gerbs View Post
Who is "the majority?"

Also, just because BMW uses a platform hardly means it's 'the best'.

A responsible company would develop and integrate across multiple platforms. Especially for something like an automobile which is used by literally hundreds of thousands of various consumers; all with varying preferences in their mobile device choices.

...You should know this, being in software development...
As a software engineer, I can tell you those numbers from the graphs don't mean anything or tell the whole story when it comes to profit or App usage. At my shop, we develop for both iOS and Android and sometimes blackberry. I am not defending the previous poster's smugness in anyway, but BMW's decision here probably makes sense. The last study I saw is that 2/3rd of all Android devices were still using 2.2, and 2.3 of the OS, which were released in 2010... That says alot about the platform. Also, it's easy to have 50% of the market when you have 300 Android devices released every year to Apple's one very expensive device. We have NEVER had a client come in and ask us to develop an app for the Android first, I think we had one that wanted to have the iOS and Android developed concurrently. They always ask for the iOS version first. It's just the way it is.

Where I work, it's almost always that we develop the iOS version first, get it to market and then develop the Android version. The iOS always has a higher retention rate.

While I realize there are plenty of BMW driver's with Anroid phones, I would bet there are alot more iPhone users, and I'm sure they did their market research here, and I assure you they are plenty resposible with their decision. I think the main reason here is they only have to make sure this app works and connects to BMW hardware with a few versions of iPhone instead of getting their hardware to work with the 45,000 available Android devices. I could be wrong, but that's my educated guess.

I would also guess that if the iPhone app is popular with their clients, they will eventually develop an Android version.
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