Symbian vs Android: app for app comparison: part 1

Steve Litchfield is taking a two part look of app for app comparison comparing Symbian offerings vs Android. In part 1, he’s looking at the top paid apps. Part 2, to be published yet, will cover Free apps.

Steve says that despite the perception of Symbian’s app-deficit, he finds that there are only two omissions – a deluxe PDF viewer and good painting app.

It also struck Steve that he has to pay to get things on Android that Symbian does for free (like WiFi hotspot, eh? Though it is inbuilt and free in some Symbian handsets)

He does accept though that commercially developed Android apps were usually slicker and more fully functioned.

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/13953_Symbian_vs_Android_app_for_app.php

Rafe (AAS/AAWP Chief) made a great comment which should be read first before comments break out into wars.

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/13953_Symbian_vs_Android_app_for_app.php#comment-402349425

I think it’s good that Symbian does cover the main paid apps. I think someone else commented in the AAS article about shopping at two different book stores. One might have 100000 more books but the main ones you want to get are in both. So, does it matter where you shop? Well to some it does, for others it won’t. Rafe’s comment linked above, as always, is a very interesting read (you’ll have to wait for it to load and the browser to jump you to that comment).

My view is also that it doesn’t matter so much about the numbers but is there a sufficient variety and proportion of quality apps? Now, another thing to consider is that apps isn’t important for everyone. The flaw we’ve gotten into is we’re making it seem that it is vital and so iOS and Android are the winners there.We are all following the rules set by Apple on what seems to be important in the market. There needs to be a leveller for Nokia, either for apps to become not so important (e.g. popularity of web apps) , for Nokia’s own apps to gain stronger growth and improve in quality or some other thing much more desirable that apps can be ignored. As well as Symbian/Qt/S40 apps, there are of course apps for Nokia’s Lumia handsets from the WP marketplace. That has shown to have great developer traction, reaching the 50k mark faster than Android even with such a small user base. We do hope that once it reaches a certain threshold, (e.g. 100k) it will become at least more of a viable option for users who would deny anything other than iOS or Android for apps.

Cheers DM for the tip.

Category: Android, Applications, Symbian