谷歌为对抗苹果向安卓应用开发者示好

    根据市场研究公司Comscore最近的一份调查显示，美国大概有50%的智能手机用户使用安卓设备。消费者热爱安卓，但软件开发者又是另外一回事了。

    当然这只是相对而言。实际上开发者们为安卓构建的应用也不少了，谷歌的Google Play数字内容商店里现在已有45万个应用可供下载。相比之下，苹果的iOS系统虽然只占了30%的消费市场份额，但在应用数量上却略胜一筹。苹果的应用商店现在已有超过58.5万个应用，有些软件制造商也承认他们更喜欢苹果的平台，因为苹果的系统更容易上手，所以他们选择只给苹果家族的几款设备做软件。

    因此谷歌现在正在努力向开发者们示好。三年前，谷歌让原本负责广告源代码开发的比利•拉特里奇领导一个由三名成员组成的开发者关系团队。现在这个小组已经拥有28名员工，而且人数还在增长。拉特里奇的工作有点像管理一个企业孵化器。他的团队会向开发者们提供关于如何构建安卓应用的建议，还会与他们会面就业务模式进行讨论。有时候，如果有的开发者虽然拥有一个好点子，但是没有安卓平台的经验和技术，拉特里奇的团队还会把他们请到加州山景城的谷歌总部来共同研讨。

    像行业会议这样的活动历来是招徕开发者最好的地方。在这些会议上，谷歌以及它的竞争对手们可以进行演说、与行业中的许多精英人士见面。拉特里奇说，谷歌去年参加了75个这样的活动。虽然拉特里奇的团队被部署在世界各地，但要想接触到那些地理位置偏远的开发者们还是很难。因此他的团队2012年的优先要务就是在网上与开发者们建立互动，以便不受地理位置的限制。目前谷歌每个季度会推出11堂网络训练课程，拉特里奇的团队打算今年把这个数字提高到50堂。另外他们也打算通过Google+的Hangout群组视频功能来安排更多的虚拟办公时间与开发者进行交流。

    随着安卓全球份额的增长，各种各样安卓设备的出现也让开发者们感到头痛：现在全球已经有1000多种使用安卓操作系统的设备，也就是说，开发者们在设计软件的时候必须考虑到与多种屏幕尺寸的契合问题。一想到要契合各种各样的屏幕排列方式，那些规模和实力较小的开发者不免会望而却步。一家名叫CRVN Interactive的小开发公司表示，它的客户经常会要求他们的产品既要能出现在iOS平台上，也要能出现在安卓上。但是一听说开发安卓应用要多花费10%到30%的时间，许多客户就打消了开发安卓应用的念头，因为更长的时间意味着更高的价格。高出的成本主要花在针对大量的安卓设备进行编码和测试上。就连Yammer和Evernote这样的大型开发公司也表示，针对大量安卓设备进行的编码和调试是个不小的负担。而苹果只有iPhone和iPad这两款设备，因而不存在这种问题。拉特里奇表示，谷歌现在正在效仿电影网站Netflix的测试模式，把五花八门的安卓设备划分成十个左右的大类，然后只对每组中的一个代表进行测试。这样开发者就可以为整个广域安卓生态系统构建具有兼容性的应用，而不必老是购买各种测试样机。

    Consumers love Google's Android operating system: Some 50% of U.S. smartphone subscribers now use a device that runs on the Android platform, according to a recent Comscore survey. But software developers? Not so much.

    Make no mistake, developers are building plenty of applications for Android; 450,000 apps are available on Google Play, the company's digital content store. But Apple's (AAPL) iOS operating system, with 30% of consumer market share, has the upper hand in apps. The App Store boasts over 585,000 titles, and some software makers confess they prefer Apple's platform because it is easier to use—and they need to make their wares work for only Apple's small family of devices.

    So Google (GOOG) is working hard to romance the developer world. Three years ago the company tapped Billy Rutledge, a developer first hired to work with the search engine's advertising source code, to lead a three-person developer-relations team. Today that group has 28 employees, and it is growing. Part of Rutledge's job is a bit like running a business incubator: His team offers developers advice on how to build apps and meets with them to discuss business models. In rare cases the team will even court developers that have a big idea but no Android expertise, bringing them to the Google campus in Mountain View, Calif., for workshops.

    The staple of keeping developers happy has traditionally been live events such as industry conferences. There, Google and its competitors can give presentations and office hours with a high concentration of members of the industry. Rutledge says Android attended 75 such events last year. Even with his team deployed around the world, Rutledge notes that it's an ongoing challenge to reach developers closer to, say, Siberia than they are to Mountain View. That's led his team to set online interactions unbound by geography as a top priority for 2012. The team plans to roll out fifty online training courses per quarter compared to its current eleven; it's also scheduling more virtual office hours using the Google+ Hangout group video capability.

    Just as its market is increasingly global, Android's broad reach across devices causes one of its pain points with developers: More than 1,000 devices worldwide use the Android operating system, which means software needs to take into account multiple screen sizes and the like. Trying to accommodate all those permutations is a strain on—or a deterrent to—smaller development shops. CRVN Interactive, a boutique app developer, says its clients often ask for their product to appear on both iOS and Android but back away from the Google offering upon hearing such development takes 10-30% longer, meaning a corresponding higher price tag. Much of that price can come from the burden of having to code and test across a slew of devices compared to the iPhone and iPad. Even large app makers such as Yammer and Evernote say it is a burden to code and test their Android offerings for a slew of devices. Rutledge says Google is working with Netflix (NFLX) to emulate the movie site's testing model. Google is attempting to group the wide field of Android devices into 10 or so buckets. Testing a representative of each group, developers can build compatible apps for the broad ecosystem without having to constantly order a new sample device.