Android: Your Mobile Platform of Choice

It’s been a long week of argument and debate, strong words and opinions – and that’s just in the Packt office. But, now the votes have been counted we can announce that Android is the Packt customer’s mobile platform of choice.

Across oour website poll and our Twitter poll, Android was the clear winner. Throughout the week, it also proved to be the most popular platform with customers, with sales of our Android eBooks exceeding those for iOS. 

As you can see, our Twitter poll, delivered a particularly significant win for Android.

Clearly there was a lot of love for Android. But what we really loved about the week was hearing some interesting perspectives from mobile developers around the world. This tweet in particular summed up why we think Android dominated the vote:

Fundamentally, it’s all about customization – with Android you have more freedom as a developer, which, for many developers is central to the sheer pleasure of the development experience. Of course, the freedom you get with Android is only a certain type of freedom – and there are, of course trade-offs if you want the openness of such a platform. This article from October 2015 suggested that Android development is ‘30% more expensive than iOS development’ due to the longer amount of time Android projects take – the writers estimate that, on average, you write 40% more code when working with Android over iOS.

But with new tools on the horizon likely to make Android development even more efficient (after all, think about what it was like to build for Android back in 2013!), it’s unsurprising that it should prove so popular with many developers.

We’re celebrating Android’s win with an additional week of offers – which means you’ve now got another week to pick up our very best Android titles and get ready for a bright and exciting future in the mobile development world!