Market Share of Android

Q.
Why do you choose to develop your application through Android?

A.
[Because it has the world biggest Market Share in Mobile Computing! In some places, because of use of iPAD, Android devices still ranked second (it ranks first if exclude iPAD) in the recent years. Nevertheless, it is fast catching up to be market leader!

Very naturally, you develop your App because you want people to download and use it! So, developing an application on the most used mobile platform is surely the way to publish your application, right!?

ADAM SMITH OCTOBER 27, 2013

Android Authority

Below is extract from Wikipedia:]

According to a Statistica's estimate, Android smartphones had an installed base of 1.6 billion units in 2014, which was 75% of the estimated total number of smartphones worldwide.[243][244][c] Android has the largest installed base of any mobile operating system and, since 2013, the highest-selling operating system overall[234][237][246][247][248] with sales in 2012, 2013 and 2014[249] close to the installed base of all PCs.[250] In the third quarter of 2013, Android's share of the global smartphone shipment market was 81.3%, the highest ever,[251] and the Android share—​led by Samsung products—​was 81.3%.[251][252][253]

By August 2015, two continents have gone mobile-majority, judged by web use ("desktop" has 51.6–56.7% use worldwide, depending on week or weekend use[254]); because of Android (see usage share of operating systems), that has majority use on smartphones in virtually all countries (all continents have gone Android-majority, including North America[255][256] except for Oceania, because of Australia),[257] with few exceptions (all of which have iOS-majority); in the US Android is close to iOS, having exchanged majority position a few times,[258] Canada and the following are also exceptions: Japan, Philippines, Australia and the only exceptions in Europe are the UK, Switzerland, and the Nordic countries Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

By 2016, virtually all countries in the world, have gone Android-majority on smartphones;[259] excluding United States and Canada (while including North America continent as a whole[260]), Australia and Japan. A few countries loose Android-majority, such as the UK, if tablets are included.

[The only concern here is developing Android App under Google Play. As China is a country which does not allow Google, so reaching to Chinese Market might be impaired when your App is published in Google Play. However, as App is an Android App, and Chinese Mobile Phone market is dominated by Android Phones, so other channels can be a way out - Baidu App Store, for example.]

[Tablet Market

Traditionally, Smartphone market is the leading market in most Android deployed countries. Most people would have a smartphone before having a tablet. This is due to cost and also market leader iPad, which is marketed as premium priced product.

Launching an App in the Apple App Store would probably be as important consideration for iPad as well as iPhone. But this is not true for Android device. Most of the time, the market of Android is medium or low cost, and hence launching an App in Android would very much be for Smartphone only.]

Despite its success on smartphones, initially Android tablet adoption was slow.[261] One of the main causes was the chicken or the egg situation where consumers were hesitant to buy an Android tablet due to a lack of high quality tablet applications, but developers were hesitant to spend time and resources developing tablet applications until there was a significant market for them.[262][263] The content and app "ecosystem" proved more important than hardware specs as the selling point for tablets. Due to the lack of Android tablet-specific applications in 2011, early Android tablets had to make do with existing smartphone applications that were ill-suited to larger screen sizes, whereas the dominance of Apple's iPad was reinforced by the large number of tablet-specific iOS applications.[263][264]

Only in recent years (2014-2015) that Android for tablet has gain its dominance.

This began to change in 2012 with the release of the affordable Nexus 7 and a push by Google for developers to write better tablet applications.[268] According to International Data Corporation, shipments of Android-powered tablets surpassed iPads in Q3 2012.[269]

As of the end of 2013, over 191.6 million Android tablets had sold in three years since 2011.[270][271] This made Android tablets the most-sold type of tablet in 2013, surpassing iPads in the second quarter of 2013.[272]

According to the StatCounter's June 2015 web use statistics, Android tablets represent the majority of tablet devices used on the South American[273] (then lost majority) and African continents (60.23%),[274] while they have equaled with the iPad's market share in major countries on all continents (with the North America as an exception, though in El Salvador Android has the majority[275]), and getting close to representing the majority on the whole Asian continent[276] having done so already in India (65.9%),[277] Indonesia (62.22%),[278] and most Middle-Eastern countries.[279] In about half of the European countries, Android tablets have a majority market share.[280] China is an exception for the major developing countries, in which Android phablets (classified as smartphones while similar in size to tablets) are more popular than Android tablets or iPads.
In short, if there is a platform to market your application, it is no other than Android! You have the biggest user base, biggest growth and an open source platform. What more do you need?

Ref:
[X] Own account.
http://www.androidauthority.com/why-developers-choose-android-285774/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)