There’s been a spot of blithering and blabbering lately about whether iOS developers ought to start developing for Android. The tenor of the Android argument seems to be that big numbers are good. “Ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume,” said Eric Schmidt.

That statement might make sense if you think that all software is written by big soulless corporations whose only motivation is profit. You can pretty easily knock that idea in the head. The App Store sells half a million apps. Just browse through them to see all the apps from small, independent developers. A quick look at successful apps—say, the Apps Starter Kit—shows that indies do very well. Excluding Apple itself, the only company with more than one product in today’s starter kit is the one-woman shop Sophiestication.

I don’t know whom Eric Schmidt thinks writes software, but it’s clear to me that a one- or two-person company has plenty of things to think about other than pure profit.

For one thing, if most indie developers were totally income-driven, they would never have chosen to become independent developers in the first place.

John Gruber pointed out that “developers like iOS. They use and prefer iPhones and iPads personally, they like Cocoa, and they like the App Store.” Makes sense to me. Marco Arment noted that going Android means investing months of time to learn the platform, doubling the support workload, doubling the maintenance workload, satisfying the requirements of three additional marketplaces, and maintaining compatibility with an ever-changing array of devices.

We all know that brilliant engineers like Jeff LaMarche write for both platforms. I think guys like Jeff are in the minority; the independent developers whom I know (as opposed to contract developers) eschew writing for Android because they don’t want to or don’t need to.

Even if we posit that iOS developers really do need more sales, and are willing to double their workload to get them, the principal question is not “Will I make more money by porting my app to Android?” but rather “Will I make more money by developing another iOS app?”