????根據(jù)市場(chǎng)研究公司Comscore最近的一份調(diào)查顯示，美國(guó)大概有50%的智能手機(jī)用戶使用安卓設(shè)備。消費(fèi)者熱愛安卓，但軟件開發(fā)者又是另外一回事了。

????當(dāng)然這只是相對(duì)而言。實(shí)際上開發(fā)者們?yōu)榘沧繕?gòu)建的應(yīng)用也不少了，谷歌的Google Play數(shù)字內(nèi)容商店里現(xiàn)在已有45萬(wàn)個(gè)應(yīng)用可供下載。相比之下，蘋果的iOS系統(tǒng)雖然只占了30%的消費(fèi)市場(chǎng)份額，但在應(yīng)用數(shù)量上卻略勝一籌。蘋果的應(yīng)用商店現(xiàn)在已有超過58.5萬(wàn)個(gè)應(yīng)用，有些軟件制造商也承認(rèn)他們更喜歡蘋果的平臺(tái)，因?yàn)樘O果的系統(tǒng)更容易上手，所以他們選擇只給蘋果家族的幾款設(shè)備做軟件。

????因此谷歌現(xiàn)在正在努力向開發(fā)者們示好。三年前，谷歌讓原本負(fù)責(zé)廣告源代碼開發(fā)的比利?拉特里奇領(lǐng)導(dǎo)一個(gè)由三名成員組成的開發(fā)者關(guān)系團(tuán)隊(duì)。現(xiàn)在這個(gè)小組已經(jīng)擁有28名員工，而且人數(shù)還在增長(zhǎng)。拉特里奇的工作有點(diǎn)像管理一個(gè)企業(yè)孵化器。他的團(tuán)隊(duì)會(huì)向開發(fā)者們提供關(guān)于如何構(gòu)建安卓應(yīng)用的建議，還會(huì)與他們會(huì)面就業(yè)務(wù)模式進(jìn)行討論。有時(shí)候，如果有的開發(fā)者雖然擁有一個(gè)好點(diǎn)子，但是沒有安卓平臺(tái)的經(jīng)驗(yàn)和技術(shù)，拉特里奇的團(tuán)隊(duì)還會(huì)把他們請(qǐng)到加州山景城的谷歌總部來共同研討。

????像行業(yè)會(huì)議這樣的活動(dòng)歷來是招徠開發(fā)者最好的地方。在這些會(huì)議上，谷歌以及它的競(jìng)爭(zhēng)對(duì)手們可以進(jìn)行演說、與行業(yè)中的許多精英人士見面。拉特里奇說，谷歌去年參加了75個(gè)這樣的活動(dòng)。雖然拉特里奇的團(tuán)隊(duì)被部署在世界各地，但要想接觸到那些地理位置偏遠(yuǎn)的開發(fā)者們還是很難。因此他的團(tuán)隊(duì)2012年的優(yōu)先要?jiǎng)?wù)就是在網(wǎng)上與開發(fā)者們建立互動(dòng)，以便不受地理位置的限制。目前谷歌每個(gè)季度會(huì)推出11堂網(wǎng)絡(luò)訓(xùn)練課程，拉特里奇的團(tuán)隊(duì)打算今年把這個(gè)數(shù)字提高到50堂。另外他們也打算通過Google+的Hangout群組視頻功能來安排更多的虛擬辦公時(shí)間與開發(fā)者進(jìn)行交流。

????隨著安卓全球份額的增長(zhǎng)，各種各樣安卓設(shè)備的出現(xiàn)也讓開發(fā)者們感到頭痛：現(xiàn)在全球已經(jīng)有1000多種使用安卓操作系統(tǒng)的設(shè)備，也就是說，開發(fā)者們?cè)谠O(shè)計(jì)軟件的時(shí)候必須考慮到與多種屏幕尺寸的契合問題。一想到要契合各種各樣的屏幕排列方式，那些規(guī)模和實(shí)力較小的開發(fā)者不免會(huì)望而卻步。一家名叫CRVN Interactive的小開發(fā)公司表示，它的客戶經(jīng)常會(huì)要求他們的產(chǎn)品既要能出現(xiàn)在iOS平臺(tái)上，也要能出現(xiàn)在安卓上。但是一聽說開發(fā)安卓應(yīng)用要多花費(fèi)10%到30%的時(shí)間，許多客戶就打消了開發(fā)安卓應(yīng)用的念頭，因?yàn)楦L(zhǎng)的時(shí)間意味著更高的價(jià)格。高出的成本主要花在針對(duì)大量的安卓設(shè)備進(jìn)行編碼和測(cè)試上。就連Yammer和Evernote這樣的大型開發(fā)公司也表示，針對(duì)大量安卓設(shè)備進(jìn)行的編碼和調(diào)試是個(gè)不小的負(fù)擔(dān)。而蘋果只有iPhone和iPad這兩款設(shè)備，因而不存在這種問題。拉特里奇表示，谷歌現(xiàn)在正在效仿電影網(wǎng)站Netflix的測(cè)試模式，把五花八門的安卓設(shè)備劃分成十個(gè)左右的大類，然后只對(duì)每組中的一個(gè)代表進(jìn)行測(cè)試。這樣開發(fā)者就可以為整個(gè)廣域安卓生態(tài)系統(tǒng)構(gòu)建具有兼容性的應(yīng)用，而不必老是購(gòu)買各種測(cè)試樣機(jī)。

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????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.