根据市场研究公司Comscore最近的一份调查显示，美国大概有50%的智能手机用户使用安卓设备。消费者热爱安卓，但软件开发者又是另外一回事了。

    当然这只是相对而言。实际上开发者们为安卓构建的应用也不少了，谷歌的Google Play数字内容商店里现在已有45万个应用可供下载。相比之下，苹果的iOS系统虽然只占了30%的消费市场份额，但在应用数量上却略胜一筹。苹果的应用商店现在已有超过58.5万个应用，有些软件制造商也承认他们更喜欢苹果的平台，因为苹果的系统更容易上手，所以他们选择只给苹果家族的几款设备做软件。

    因此谷歌现在正在努力向开发者们示好。三年前，谷歌让原本负责广告源代码开发的比利•拉特里奇领导一个由三名成员组成的开发者关系团队。现在这个小组已经拥有28名员工，而且人数还在增长。拉特里奇的工作有点像管理一个企业孵化器。他的团队会向开发者们提供关于如何构建安卓应用的建议，还会与他们会面就业务模式进行讨论。有时候，如果有的开发者虽然拥有一个好点子，但是没有安卓平台的经验和技术，拉特里奇的团队还会把他们请到加州山景城的谷歌总部来共同研讨。

    像行业会议这样的活动历来是招徕开发者最好的地方。在这些会议上，谷歌以及它的竞争对手们可以进行演说、与行业中的许多精英人士见面。拉特里奇说，谷歌去年参加了75个这样的活动。虽然拉特里奇的团队被部署在世界各地，但要想接触到那些地理位置偏远的开发者们还是很难。因此他的团队2012年的优先要务就是在网上与开发者们建立互动，以便不受地理位置的限制。目前谷歌每个季度会推出11堂网络训练课程，拉特里奇的团队打算今年把这个数字提高到50堂。另外他们也打算通过Google+的Hangout群组视频功能来安排更多的虚拟办公时间与开发者进行交流。

    随着安卓全球份额的增长，各种各样安卓设备的出现也让开发者们感到头痛：现在全球已经有1000多种使用安卓操作系统的设备，也就是说，开发者们在设计软件的时候必须考虑到与多种屏幕尺寸的契合问题。一想到要契合各种各样的屏幕排列方式，那些规模和实力较小的开发者不免会望而却步。一家名叫CRVN Interactive的小开发公司表示，它的客户经常会要求他们的产品既要能出现在iOS平台上，也要能出现在安卓上。但是一听说开发安卓应用要多花费10%到30%的时间，许多客户就打消了开发安卓应用的念头，因为更长的时间意味着更高的价格。高出的成本主要花在针对大量的安卓设备进行编码和测试上。就连Yammer和Evernote这样的大型开发公司也表示，针对大量安卓设备进行的编码和调试是个不小的负担。而苹果只有iPhone和iPad这两款设备，因而不存在这种问题。拉特里奇表示，谷歌现在正在效仿电影网站Netflix的测试模式，把五花八门的安卓设备划分成十个左右的大类，然后只对每组中的一个代表进行测试。这样开发者就可以为整个广域安卓生态系统构建具有兼容性的应用，而不必老是购买各种测试样机。

    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.

    谷歌并不认为在安卓上研发一款应用要比在iOS上研发相同应用更耗时。拉特里奇也表示，精通安卓系统的开发者如果转移到iOS平台上，他就会发现还是安卓平台编码更快。但现在应用开发界普遍朝苹果看齐，这些公司必须决定是否应该专门发展安卓产品。比如在Evernote就有好几支独立的开发团队专门针对iOS或安卓进行开发。该公司的产品总监菲尔•康斯坦蒂诺表示：“我们甚至希望两个版本之间形成竞争。”Yammer的工程师们则采取了另一条路子，公司向安卓和iOS平台投入了同等的资源，当其中一个平台需要某个独特的解决方案时，工程师们就会集中力量专攻这个项目。知名旅游网站TripAdvisor则有两支团队，不过他们分别负责维护它的两款主要应用，而不是专注于某一个系统平台。团队中的成员如果对一个平台更有经验的话，也可以为最终产品提供一些定制内容。

    TripAdvisor的产品总监亚当•麦卓斯解释道：“安卓用户不喜欢他们的应用看起来像iPhone应用。他们买安卓设备是有原因的。”

    安卓用户无需担心他们的应用全盘克隆iPhone应用。不过据拉特里奇介绍，在如何向开发者提供帮助的问题上，安卓将向苹果“取经”。尽管其他操作系统（包括苹果）都会向开发者提供基本的工具，比如一些现成的代码组，以帮助软件工程师节省时间和成本，但谷歌历来采取更加放任自流的态度。拉特里奇表示，这种情况即将发生改变。他的团队打算把诸如导航等常用功能的优秀代码公布于众，这样开发者可以直接拿来使用。这些开发工具可以减轻所有应用开发者的负担，但对于那些把主要资源集中在软件功能开发上的小公司来说帮助更大。

    “我们不想走到另一个极端上，让所有的应用看起来都一样，”拉特里奇说：“不过有些捷径可以帮助开发者把产品推向市场。”这番话听起来可能并不浪漫，但这就是谷歌这个科技巨头向开发者“求爱”的方式。

    译者：朴成奎

    Android disputes the notion that its development takes inherently longer than comparable projects over iOS, and Rutledge argues that Android-proficient developers can code faster than they would when switching to iOS. But with Apple as the standing benchmark, companies must decide whether to commit to such specialization. At Evernote, independent teams develop for each platform. "We almost like them to compete with each other," says, Phil Constantinou, the company's head of product. The engineers at Yammer try another tack: the company devotes equal resources to Android and iOS, and developers specialize more when a platform requires a unique solution. The popular travel website TripAdvisor has two teams, but split to cover each of its two major apps, not to focus on one system. Members of each team with more experience on a platform can then provide some customization to the final product.

    "Android users really dislike it when their app looks like an iPhone's," explains TripAdvisor product chief Adam Medros. "They bought an Android for a reason."

    Android users need not fret that they will soon have iPhone clones.. But according to Rutledge, Android's development offerings will be taking a baby step toward Apple's highly curated approach. While other mobile operating systems, including Apple's, offer developers basic tools, like blocks of code, that can save software engineers time and money, Google traditionally has taken a more laissez-faire approach. Rutledge says that is about to change. He says his team plans to share coding "best practices" that developers can copy for formulaic functions such as navigation. Such building tools would ease the developing burden for app makers of all sizes, but can especially help small companies focus resources on the functionality that might set their app apart in the marketplace.

    "We don't want to go to the far extreme of cookie cutters, where all apps look the same," Rutledge says. "But shortcuts can help developers get to market." It might not sound all that romantic, but that's how a tech giant woos.