4 Reasons Why Porting Android to iOS Will Help Your Business Grow
We are sure that most of our readers already have an idea about the benefits they can get from converting an android app to iOS. If so, jump straight to the next parts, where experts explain how the converting process should be handled. In case you still have doubts or want to have a clearer vision of the situation, feel free to read further about the reasons for converting an Android app to iOS.
#1. Turn the whole world into your potential users
There are two players in the mobile market—Android and iOS. And, let’s be honest, the alternative is not visible in the near future. Both these platforms are and will be the only parties, sharing the market, in recent years or perhaps even decades. Let’s allow figures to speak for themselves about the advantages of converting Android to iOS for the business.
- 68% of the whole market is grasped by Android, so it simply dominates the market.
- Having 30%, iOS, however, is still a more powerful player than the rest of the platforms. Marketing does its deed.
In simple words, in case your app will be converted for the alternative platform, you will literally cover the whole market because Android and iOS have 98% potential customers in total.
#2. Reach new markets
The second point comes from the first one. If the app is available for both platforms, it means not just full market coverage. It means much more—a possibility to dominate new markets, new cities and countries, and even new segments of the target audience.
It is vivid and clear when we are talking about the shift from iOS to Android. Furthermore, it opens huge possibilities and undercovers the potential of Asian and Eastern European markets, not talking about Africa and South America.
If you do vice versa, you will get better coverage in North America and Eastern Europe because iOS devices are preferred there.
#3. Provide yourself with a higher profitability
Though selecting a monetization model is of great importance, when we’re talking about revenue from an app. Still, Regardless of the monetization model you use, it is clear that having an app for two platforms is more profitable than having an app just for one platform. You can literally make more money. But how exactly will the income be boosted? Let’s have a look.
- In-app ads work perfectly for Android apps because they are free and cover a major part of the market
- For iOS in-app purchases work better because the audience is willingly paying for additional features and content.
It leads to another fact worth considering—having twice less iOS used than Android ones, you can generate the same income or even hit the new goal of getting revenue.
4 two is better than one
The advantages of having two apps instead of one are obvious, but let’s still sum up a bit:
- 2 revenue sources, not one
- 2 marketing tools to use and strategies to implement, getting more profit
- 2 communication channels to get feedback from the users
We can continue this list, making it pretty huge, but the main idea seems to be clear enough. The field you are working in and the kind of app does not matter here—in the long run, you will get benefits from having two apps instead of one this way or that. Here you might say, ok, but how does one process the whole deal? What does the converting cover and what does it have under the hood? Check the next paragraph and see.
How to convert Android code to iOS: Basics
It would be perfect if we had some converter where you could convert an app by pressing the button. But does such a service exist? Unfortunately, not yet. The platforms differ and each of them has its own peculiarities, so it’s impossible to process the conversion with one click. One of the best and the most obvious options is to create a second app, a separate product, and work with it in marketing terms. The only exception is when you use some framework like React Native or its competitors.
It might seem that shifting an app from one platform to another is something like the old good of converting a PDF to DOCX or something like that. Unfortunately (or not?), it’s not even close.
If you ask us what metaphor can be used, we would pick the process of building the house. Imagine you have two separate patches of land (which will represent the platforms). And if you want to build a house on each of them, you should do it two times. Simple copying does not work here. The second house will be built from scratch, the same as the second app. We have some good news, however.
- The development will be faster because the team will have an example to start with, and this example is your app for the alternative platform, the one you have created already.
- Support will not become an issue too if you pick a professional agency as the service provider. If the agency really has a good hand in shifting and converting apps from one platform to another, it can provide complete high-quality support.
As it was mentioned, the tool allows to convert the app to an alternative platform does not exist. But having an example in hand, the development team can process the launch faster. Here are some tips we have come to in Celadonsoft out of our experience in converting apps. Have a look.
Tip 1: Modern technologies and programming languages up to date
There are two programming languages used for mobile development under iOS, - Swift and Objective-C. If we are talking about Android, the programming languages to work with are Java and Kotlin. But Swift and Kotlin are relatively “young”, so they have some common features, making shifts easier for the developer. Among the common features are:
- Some parts of the code can be copied and corrected a bit, though the languages are not identical. In any case, it is faster than writing the whole code from scratch.
- The common syntax allows developers to understand the code in both languages, even without actual skill in programming.
For you, it means that if the app was written using one of the modern languages, the developers can adapt it for another platform faster and with ease. So technically converting takes less time. Hence, it will be cheaper as the project estimations are affected by the developer’s hourly rates.
Tip 2: Platform specific code and business logic are separated
To take the maximum out of the first advice, the developers will distinguish the features related to business logic and the ones which are specific to the platform.
The UI part is mostly “ruled” by the platform-specific code.
With this knowledge, the priorities can be set according to the business needs. However, it has a huge impact on the estimations and they're correct and adequate. One might ask a question if it is possible to discard this part and work only with the business-related features. The answer is no—the platform-specific code is the thing making the app look native.
