Is it worth writing for Honeycomb yet?_问答_开发者

I'm just one person who writes both iOS and Andorid apps in his free time. I have a few开发者_JAVA技巧 Android apps that I think would be good candidates for updates that allow them to run natively on Honeycomb.

But, since I don't have a Honeycomb tablet and I don't feel comfortable releasing an app I've only tested on the emulator, is it worth the investment of both time and money (for purchasing a tablet) in writing an app for Honeycomb? Can any developers who have been in a similar situation as me comment on whether they've seen their downloads increase as a result of a Honeycomb-compliant update? Thanks.

I'm not sure if this is really a programming question, as it pertains more to business development (I think), but I'll give it a shot.

Judging by your explanation, I'd guess you don't have 5,500 users yet. I could be entirely wrong about that, and if so I apologise. But we know that 5,500 developers received tablets from I/O. That means that at the very least, you have a market of 5,500 people.

Most large companies have the same mindset as @momo-- that it isn't worth it. So the "tablet-optimised" area of the Market remains prime real estate that is fairly simple to get into. Just write a competent app that is optimised for Honeycomb.

Now, my point isn't that you'll get 5,500 new users; that really depends on the app. My point is two-fold: first, that your market is (likely) larger than your current user count (and therefore worth considering); second, developing for that market now will be much more effective than developing for it when the market has expanded, because of the recognition you'll receive. Early adopters tend to be rewarded pretty well.

I can't advise your case specifically; I don't know many of the details. How big of a financial risk is it to buy a tablet? How much of the tablet experience can your app benefit from? How many pressing issues does your codebase have for the phone version? How much time do you have to devote to the tablet experience? I can go on and on, and these issues all counterbalance each other and are weighted differently.

I went to I/O, so I got a tablet, so I'll try to support tablets for my apps. A lot of people have to decide whether to sink $500 into dev or not; my advice is, ask yourself how likely it is that you'll make your $500 back. You should already have a good idea; you already have a phone version on the market. Once you know how likely it is, you know whether it's a good investment or not.

Our company develop several apps for our clients and none of them have asked us to upgrade to Honeycomb.

Part of the reasons is simply that the Honeycomb market distribution is still too low (0.4%, 0.7% and 0.2% for each version of honeycomb per Android website) to justify any development and investment as you have mentioned above. However, if you want to gain familiarity of the features and API of Honeycomb then it's always good to invest your time developing for Honeycomb

If you want to target Google TV, the Fragments stuff is great.

Here's my distribution statistics (267008 total installs)

Android 2.2 - 50.3%
Android 2.3.3+ - 27.8%
Android 2.1 - 13.7%
Android 1.6 - 3.5%
Android 1.5 - 2.4%
Android 3.1 - 0.6%
Android 2.3 - 0.5%
Android 3.0 - 0.2%
Android 1.1 - 0.1%
Android 2.0.1 - 0.1%

So, if you're selling apps and just looking from the profit-point of view I think Honeycomb is not yet relevant.

But, on the other side, as an Honeycomb user it makes me happy to find an application wich is fited to Android 3.x already. Further from the developers side of view it's probably not bad to keep the finger on the pulse of time