Not really. The number of people you can sell your app to is some superset of the number of people who own a given specific device or classification of devices, but you don't know how much of a superset it is. So you have no way of estimating how big your real market is.

To simplify the example - say you know that 10 million people own Device Y and 8 million people own Device X. But you also know that software written for Device Y will also run on Device A and equally software written to run on Device X will also run on Device B. So the total market size for your app is either (10m+A) or (8m+B), depending on which platform you adopt. You have no idea of the actual value of A or B. Which of the two are you likely to sell more copies of your app on, all other things being equal? You can make the decision only if you're fairly sure that B isn't massively bigger than A. Without hard data, you're making a guess. Now you could get lucky and make a fortune or you could end up going bust, literally, because of it. Is it a good idea to guess then, or is it a better idea to actually get the whole picture?

The only number that matters is 'how many people in the world can I sell my app to'. Anything which defines a indeterminate subset of that number is really no use at all.

Jon

Why is it assumed you don't know? If figures show that in the UK for example 20 million smartphones have been sold (I'm sure these types of figures would be available from carriers and retailers) then knowing that Android accounts for 28% of this market you can calculate fairly accurately how many potential users of your app there are.

Objectively, the number of buyers of your app is not the same as the number of smart phone owners. As of right now on Android, it pretty near is, because no Android tablet has sold a massive number of units - I'm assuming the Galaxy Tab has sold 'some' and the Xoom not many, given the stats I posted earlier on, and I'm going to keep trying to ignore the tablets Maplin sell for 100 quid that basically don't work not least because none of them have the Android market place available unless you hack them. Also, there isn't an Android equivalent of the iPod Touch that's sold in large numbers either. Right now, for Android, your estimation is probably not unreasonable. Six months from now, it'll be way out. How long is your app going to take to code and test then?

As a calculation it's way out now if you look at the iOS platform (which is where the Android platform will be once the devices that run it diversify significantly away from just 'phones'). On the iOS platform you've got to also include the iPod Touch - which it's actually quite hard to get concrete numbers for but most analysts seem to agree its sold more units than the iPhone has - and the iPad, although if you're making an iOS app that's non-universal it would have to be pretty compelling for iPad owners to buy it. Anyway, if you assume 'number of potential customers on iOS' ~= 'Number of people who have bought smartphones' then you've got your estimate wrong by at least 50% , according to prevalent opinion. That's true now of iOS and it'll be true on Android 6 months to a year from now, IMO.

This is true unless your app includes phone function specific features i.e. its some form of dialer or SMS app. In only that specific case, you are selling to smartphone owners, not 'platform owners'.

Dividing iOS and Android users up into 'smartphone owners' and 'everyone else' is like splitting Windows PC owners up into 'desktop computer owners' and 'laptop owners'. Unless you specifically want to target laptop owners with your product, why the heck would you do that?

I shall read that later but for now will ask why all the talk of tablets? Smartphones are the topic of discussion.

Hmm,

Android and Facebook among most serious malware issues, report shows

http://www.itproportal.com/2011/06/01/g ... id-market/

Google seem to be getting faster at finding this stuff.

All security is as strong as the weakest link, users for the most part

I turned on FaceNiff on my phone yesterday at work (similar to FireSheep but on Android) and had credentials to most Facebook and twitter accounts for the staff
Using HTTP was the fail there, especially when Facebook offer HTTPS now