Android Isn’t Easy On Appy Pie: Fragmentation Plagues Even DIY App Builders

As technology typically aims to simplify the tasks of life, many aspects of developing, such as website building are now often relegated to plug-and-play templates, including those provided by Wix or Squarespace.

The evolution of website development could be a foresight into the future of app development, where the average user readily creates mobile applications in minutes and can have them published on the Google Play Store or iTunes within a day or two. While platforms such as Appy Pie currently cater primarily to businesses, the industry anticipates a day when app development becomes a lot more ubiquitous.

“It’s a very simple process and we’ve got kids and young as 10-years-old who are in school being taught mobile app development using Appy Pie,” Appy Pie CEO, Abs Girdhar, told International Business Times.

Appy Pie is marketed largely to small businesses and entrepreneurs, such as restaurants, churches, and DJs, according to Girdhar. It offers a plug-and-play app building service, which requires no prior coding or programming knowledge to develop a mobile application and publish it for public use.

“You drag and drop the elements that you want, populate your content then get your app published on Google Play and iTunes,” Girdhar said. “Typically an app can be designed in less than 15 minutes.”

Appy Pie has even gained attention from large corporations, such as Nike and Home Depot, which have used the platform for creating applications for niche campaigns and events. But the next frontier for such platforms may not be businesses, but rather the everyday user, looking to create an application as simply as they can start a blog.

“We are trying to go in [that] direction; however, in our scenario, things are a little tough,” Girdhar said. “Web has evolved, mobile is still relatively new in terms of technology.”

App builder services have been plagued by the same issues that traditional mobile programmers have faced for years. The fragmentation of the Android platform makes it difficult to develop applications across a range of different smartphones with different hardware requirements and software customizations, according to Girdhar.

Though Apple has added new smartphone and tablet sizes in recent years, iOS remains a much easier platform on which to develop, as most iOS devices update to the same operating system at the same time. Google’s most recent Nougat software is currently running on only 6.6 percent of Android smartphones, while the upcoming Android O software could be announced as early as July.

Google has launched several initiatives to help combat software fragmentation. Most recently, the tech giant announced Project Treble, which is expected to allow OEMs to push stock Android software to handsets, separate from customized software. The protocol will be implemented in the upcoming Android O software, but it may not be enough to resolve overall issues with fragmentation if the new system version is slowly adopted.

At this time, most major tech companies do not have plug-and-play app builders marketed to novice users, so third party app builders are left to their own devices. Appy Pie uses a combination of proprietary technologies with HTML 5 to develop its platform.

Even without layman users, Appy Pie has a tremendous client base, with more than 2 million apps created and 25,000 to 30,000 subscribers using the platform daily, according to Girdhar. The service has been rated as the best app maker by TopTenReviews.