Anthropic's decision to launch Claude mobile app on Android after Apple is a good business move

Anthropic’s Claude mobile app has finally arrived on Android. After launching for quite some time in several countries for iOS devices, the Claude 3.5 Sonnet-powered app is now available for free download, with premium Pro and Team plans.

The Claude mobile app on iOS and Android works like the ChatGPT app. It’s cross-platform, meaning you can continue where you left off everywhere, and you also have features like vision capabilities, multilingual processing, and advanced reasoning.

It launched not too long ago, but according to its Google Play Store page, it’s already racking up thousands of downloads.

The app’s description reads, “Claude is free to use. If you want 5x more Claude usage and access to additional models (Claude 3 Opus and Haiku), consider upgrading to our paid Pro plan.”

But why Apple first, though, especially coming from a company that had a $4 billion investment from Amazon? Because, in a somewhat similar fashion to how the ChatGPT desktop app first arrived on macOS before Windows, the AI company also decided to launch the Claude mobile app on Apple’s iOS before Google’s Android.

Anthropic wants to tap into the high-spending and early-adopter user base of Apple’s ecosystem. iOS has a reputation for having a secure, closed, and premium platform, and as far as Amazon is concerned, having a good base of Apple users first before the open-sourced Android could benefit a lot of parties.

But sure, Claude’s mobile app’s arrival may seem a bit late, but it’s better late than never. ChatGPT’s mobile app has been around for years and even emerged as one of the top apps on both iOS and Android. Microsoft’s Copilot launched last year, and so is Google’s Gemini mobile app on Android, while it comes as a separate experience on iOS.