Here we have the most popular app on the iPhone, Angry Birds, made by a company that has literally made millions of dollars on this one app on iOS. So they decide to make an Android version, too. Why not? But they can’t charge for it, because there’s no money in paid apps on Android. (Too many countries don’t allow paid apps on Google Marketplace.) So they instead offer it for free with ads.
Next they run into the infamous problem of fragmentation on Android. Several models (some of which are not old models at all) can’t be officially supported; they will need to make a special “lightweight” version with crappier graphics and animation for underpowered phones. So complaints have been pouring in about poor performance from disgruntled users.
The users, of course, have a lot of nerve blaming Rovio for this mess. They complain that Angry Birds should be free, have no ads, and work perfectly on any of the thousands of Android devices out there. Of course it should. Because they have the open phone. And open is always better. And Google doesn’t do evil. Blah blah blah. They honestly expected Rovio to test every one of the models out there?
And this is an audience that developers should be lusting after?
Think about this article next time you read some pundit yapping on about all those developers who are going to be flocking over to Android any minute now. I just don’t see it happening, and this blog post is exactly the reason.
I hope that Rovio posts a comparison of how much profit they made on each platform. Even if they don’t, you’ll know how profitable this Angry Birds Android experiment was by which platforms Rovio decides to target for their next app.
If the world really wants to move toward buggy, ad-supported crapware made by hobbyists, then I guess they’ll get exactly that. Meanwhile the good developers are going to stay where the money is.
