Bob Bowman, who runs Major League Baseball Advanced Media, the digital business jointly owned by all of pro baseball’s teams spoke today with AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka.
“MLB.com boasts one of the most successful subscription businesses in digital media; last year, the company reported 1.5 million subscribers, and expects that number to hit 2 million this year,” Kafka reports. “So it’s worth listening to Bowman’s take on Apple vs. Android, his company’s recent Facebook experiment, and why mobile advertising is taking off.”
Peter Kafka: You’ve complained publicly before about the difficulty in supporting multiple flavors of Android for your apps. But this year you’ve expanded the number of Android handsets you’re supporting from 6 to 11. Did you ever consider not working with Android at all?
Bob Bowman: The short answer is no. But what we have done is that we don’t support every Android phone. Because at some point, it’s diminishing returns. The Android user typically is less likely to buy, and therefore the ROI on developing for Android is different than it is for Apple.
Peter Kafka:Why do you think an Android owner behaves differently than an iPhone owner?
Bob Bowman: The iPhone and iPad user is interested in buying content–that’s one of the reasons they bought the device. The Android buyer is different. It’s a great phone–make no mistake about it. But if you really want first rate digital content on a device, your first look will probably be an iPhone. And on the tablet, an iPad.
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Android is an OS, not a phone, so “it” can’t be a “great phone”; in other words which one, exactly, is so “great?” That said, this mythical generic Android phone is a “great phone” if you like to install trojans and other assorted malware, risking your personal information, after-thought apps, rampant fragmentation, patent infringement, poor approximations of Apple products and services, and, most of all, if you’re cheap. Otherwise, get an iPhone.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Related article:
MLB.com At Bat 11 released with free MLB.TV trial on Apple iPad, iPhone, iPod touch – April 1, 2011