App analytics firm Flurry said that developers are still primarily choosing iOS as the platform to support, with seven-out-of-ten total apps written for Apple’s OS, although there has been a slight shift in favour towards Android in the early part of 2012.

The company suggests that the increased support for the Google platform – which accounted for more than 30 percent of projects for the first time since the first quarter of 2011 – may be due to seasonality, because “Apple traditionally experiences a spike in developer support leading up to the holiday season.”

It suggests that some of the appeal may be related to Apple’s dominance in the tablet space, meaning that due to the commonalties with its smartphone platform, it is “like getting two platforms for the price of one.”

In a blog post, Flurry said: “Apple offers the most compelling ‘build once, run anywhere’ value proposition in the market today, delivering maximum consumer reach to developers for minimal cost.”

The company notes that in terms of the top three tablets, the iPad holds an 88 percent share, compared with just 9 percent for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab and 3 percent for Amazon’s Kindle Fire.

Android fragmentation
Flurry said that in contrast, the distribution of Android user sessions is much more fragmented, “along two significant vectors – devices and firmware.”

The most popular single device, Samsung’s Galaxy S II, accounts for 18 percent of user sessions from the top 20 most popular terminals, although Flurry’s chart also features a separate category headed “GALAXY S2,” with other variants also listed.

Four vendors have terminals in the top 20 – Samsung, Motorola, HTC and Amazon – with 17 of the devices having a share of sessions of 6 percent or less. This means that “each additional device a developer supports will deliver only a small increase in distribution coverage.”

In terms of platforms, 70 percent of sessions are from Android 2.3 devices (Gingerbread), which the company said is “only the third newest iteration of the OS” – although Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) was actually something of a stop-gap, and an evolutionary dead-end.

Android 3.0, together with the later Android 4.0, make up 11 percent of user sessions. This is still less than the aging Android 2.2, which is used in 16 percent of cases.

Cash questions
Flurry said that in terms of revenue, the amount generated is still 4 times greater for iOS than Android. This echoes Flurry’s earlier findings.

The company concluded: “At the end of the day, developers run businesses, and businesses seek out markets where revenue opportunities are highest and the cost of building and distributing is lowest. In short, Android delivers less gain and more pain than iOS, which we believe is the key reason 7 out of every 10 apps built in the new economy are for iOS instead of Android.”