Steve Jobs took time on the Apple financial call yesterday to discuss how the iOS platform is better than Android, since the ‘open’ platform of Android is becoming fragmented while the ‘closed’ iOS platform remains consistent. He gave an example of how the developers of TweetDeck apparently were frustrated developing the Android version of the app because they had to deal with too many variations of the Android platform which made development more difficult than for iOS
This kicker in this story – the CEO for the company that develops TweetDeck publicly responded, appropriately via Twitter, saying that they said no such thing. In fact they countered Jobs statement saying that developing for Android was cool because their app can run on so many different devices which shows how little the issue of perceived fragmentation actually is, and that the actual development was easy and that they only have 2 developers working on the Android app.
Hmm. Something not adding up there. Someone’s not doing their research, or Apple just dropped some unbelievable unsubstantiated FUD that only Microsoft has been successful of previously pulling off.
There’s no doubt that the iPhone has been wildly successful, but this week was the first week I overhead more than one conversation of people deciding to ditch their iPhones for an Android phone instead. If this is any indication of a change across other iPhone users, then it’s understandable why Jobs spent time on the investor call to give the sell on why iOS is better than Android. Shame he didn’t get his facts right.