Google's Android Market estimated to earn just 7% of what Apple's App Store makes
Apple's iOS platform is believed to take in about 90 percent of all dollars spent on mobile devices, highlighting the revenue advantage for iPhone and iPad developers when compared to Google's Android.
Analyst Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray said on Monday that he believes Google's Android Market has generated about 7 percent of the gross revenue that Apple's App Store has raked in since its inception.
"In other words, it appears that Apple has roughly 85-90% market share in dollars spent on mobile applications," he wrote in a note to investors. "While Google has closed the gap in terms of app dollars spent over the last year and we continue to believe Android will grow smartphone share faster than Apple, we believe Apple is likely to maintain 70%+ share of mobile app dollars spent over the next 3-4 years."
The estimates reached by Piper Jaffray come from numbers publicly revealed by Apple, as well as data from Androlib, an Android application discovery tool. Munster said that he believes about $330 million has been generated on the Android Market to date, while only 1.3 percent of the applications on the Android Market are paid.
"Thus, with 6.75 billion total app downloads to date, we believe roughly 90 million of those were paid apps," he said of Android. "As a comparison, we estimate that Apple has generated $4.9 billion in gross sales since inception through the September quarter and that 14% of total app downloads on the App Store have been paid apps."
In terms of average selling prices, Munster's numbers suggest that Android users pay more for a single application, but download fewer paid applications overall. The top 50 paid Android applications have an average selling price of $3.79, compared to an average selling price of $2.01 on Apple's App Store.
Based on the fact that Google has activated 200 million total Android devices, Munster has estimated that there are an average of 34 applications on each Android device. That compares to about 71 applications on each iOS device.
In June, Munster polled developers at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, and found that 47 percent of respondents develop applications for Google Android as well as Apple's iOS. But all 45 developers he spoke with said that iOS is the easiest platform for development and the best to monetize an application.
Highlighting the importance of mobile application stores in the future, one estimate has called for platforms like iOS and Android to generate $14 billion in direct revenue in 2012. While the volume of applications downloaded on Android is expected to surpass the iOS App Store, Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod touch platform is expected to generate $2.86 billion in application revenue by 2016, compared to just $1.5 billion on Android.
Analyst Gene Munster with Piper Jaffray said on Monday that he believes Google's Android Market has generated about 7 percent of the gross revenue that Apple's App Store has raked in since its inception.
"In other words, it appears that Apple has roughly 85-90% market share in dollars spent on mobile applications," he wrote in a note to investors. "While Google has closed the gap in terms of app dollars spent over the last year and we continue to believe Android will grow smartphone share faster than Apple, we believe Apple is likely to maintain 70%+ share of mobile app dollars spent over the next 3-4 years."
The estimates reached by Piper Jaffray come from numbers publicly revealed by Apple, as well as data from Androlib, an Android application discovery tool. Munster said that he believes about $330 million has been generated on the Android Market to date, while only 1.3 percent of the applications on the Android Market are paid.
"Thus, with 6.75 billion total app downloads to date, we believe roughly 90 million of those were paid apps," he said of Android. "As a comparison, we estimate that Apple has generated $4.9 billion in gross sales since inception through the September quarter and that 14% of total app downloads on the App Store have been paid apps."
In terms of average selling prices, Munster's numbers suggest that Android users pay more for a single application, but download fewer paid applications overall. The top 50 paid Android applications have an average selling price of $3.79, compared to an average selling price of $2.01 on Apple's App Store.
Based on the fact that Google has activated 200 million total Android devices, Munster has estimated that there are an average of 34 applications on each Android device. That compares to about 71 applications on each iOS device.
In June, Munster polled developers at Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, and found that 47 percent of respondents develop applications for Google Android as well as Apple's iOS. But all 45 developers he spoke with said that iOS is the easiest platform for development and the best to monetize an application.
Highlighting the importance of mobile application stores in the future, one estimate has called for platforms like iOS and Android to generate $14 billion in direct revenue in 2012. While the volume of applications downloaded on Android is expected to surpass the iOS App Store, Apple's iPhone, iPad and iPod touch platform is expected to generate $2.86 billion in application revenue by 2016, compared to just $1.5 billion on Android.
Comments
My bet is revenue. If MS can get developers making slightly more money than Android developers, Android development could simply stop.
Will developers follow market share or revenue?
My bet is revenue. If MS can get developers making slightly more money than Android developers, Android development could simply stop.
By that reasoning Blackberry development should have simply stopped. Yet it hasn't.
Will developers follow market share or revenue?
My bet is revenue. If MS can get developers making slightly more money than Android developers, Android development could simply stop.
Yep, my app sales are so abysmal on the Android Market compared to iOS, I cannot fathom developing another app for that platform. It's about 10:1 favoring iOS. With those odds, developing for Android is simply a waste of time if your goal is to make a real amount of money. All Microsoft needs to do is say "You will make more money on Windows Phone than on Android" and it's game over.
And I think Windows 8 will play a huge part in that happening as I expect you'll be able to buy Windows Phone apps in the same place you buy Windows 8 apps. That is, assuming they don't do they next logical think and make the Windows Phone 8 kernel based on Windows 8, meaning one app will run on both platforms. With the number of people that run Windows, if they become interested in Windows Phone and learn they already have a bunch of compatible apps they've already bought for their Windows 8 machine, switching over won't feel so terrible.
Yep, my app sales are so abysmal on the Android Market compared to iOS, I cannot fathom developing another app for that platform. It's about 10:1 favoring iOS. With those odds, developing for Android is simply a waste of time if your goal is to make a real amount of money. All Microsoft needs to do is say "You will make more money on Windows Phone than on Android" and it's game over.
And I think Windows 8 will play a huge part in that happening as I expect you'll be able to buy Windows Phone apps in the same place you buy Windows 8 apps. That is, assuming they don't do they next logical think and make the Windows Phone 8 kernel based on Windows 8, meaning one app will run on both platforms. With the number of people that run Windows, if they become interested in Windows Phone and learn they already have a bunch of compatible apps they've already bought for their Windows 8 machine, switching over won't feel so terrible.
Are you serious? 10:1? That is extreme. Are your Apps free or paid?
Would you mind sharing the name(s) of your apps, I am always looking for good apps.
Another way to put those stats is that a few Apps are making a bunch of money in the Android store, and everyone else isn't making much at all.
The Achilles heal of the Google open platform is that when you align yourself with a community ( open source ) that prefers free software, it's kind of hard to compel them to help out 3rd party developers who are selling commercial software.
( reread what I wrote there carefully if you think I'm open source bashing, I'm not. )
Of course Google really cares only minimally forthe Android Market itself. They just want the analytics.
I'm curious what the top 10 apps were in that 1.3% of paid apps.
Another way to put those stats is that a few Apps are making a bunch of money in the Android store, and everyone else isn't making much at all.
The Achilles heal of the Google open platform is that when you align yourself with a community ( open source ) that prefers free software, it's kind of hard to compel them to help out 3rd party developers who are selling commercial software.
( reread what I wrote there carefully if you think I'm open source bashing, I'm not. )
Of course Google really cares only minimally forthe Android Market itself. They just want the analytics.
If you're really curious, just take a look.
https://market.android.com/?hl=en
The Android Market is pretty easy to navigate with stock searches for Top Paid, Top Free, Top Grossing, Top New Apps, etc.
Aside from the limited sales, and Google pushing ads vs. real purchases, there’s the support nightmare. Android is a badly-fragmented platform, where devices get rapidly abandoned by their makers and too few users are on the latest OS. That makes development and testing a nightmare. Piracy and app-cloning is way too easy, and you end up spending your time giving tech-support to too many people who never paid you. And you don’t have Apple to field support requests re the purchasing side, either.
It sounds like an utter nightmare with only the slimmest chance of all that time/effort/risk paying for itself. And even LESS chance of it paying for itself vs. putting those same resources into simply making a second iOS app!
There’s an answer though, that will get me on board with Android development: someone makes a proprietary Android-derived platform that is more iOS-like, with just 1 or 2 screen sizes, hardware that gets OS updates for a long time like iOS gets, hardware and software designed together as a whole by a single company, and a secure, turnkey store like Apple’s. And then it has to see high-volume success. Maybe Amazon will do it, although their bargain-basement corner-cutting and the fact that they’re already planning to replace the Fire with a bit larger screen does not give me hope. Still, Android could provide a great foundation for SOMEONE to make a great platform following Apple’s lead.
And how would androlib know what percentages of downloads are paid? It is a tool that allows you to search for and load wallpapers on your phone. Not many people pay for wallpapers.
Now... ask me where I would put my money...
And yet somehow this is profitable for Google.
I don't think apps is where they thought they'd generated most of their revenue, its in the searches people do on their devices.
And yet somehow this is profitable for Google.
Where did you see the data on that? Care to provide a source?
Android is definitely WAY down my priority list for selling my game (when/if I finish it, that is
Aside from the limited sales, and Google pushing ads vs. real purchases, there’s the support nightmare. Android is a badly-fragmented platform, where devices get rapidly abandoned by their makers and too few users are on the latest OS.
Actually a higher percentage of Android phones are on the latest version compared to iPhone owners., 40% for iOS and 44% for Android.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2396073,00.asp
http://developer.android.com/resourc...-versions.html
It sounds as tho you should spend a bit of time in the Android Developers' Blog before writing off the platform. You appear to have some misconceptions, or at minimum some misunderstanding of what's involved and what resources Google offers you.
http://developer.android.com/index.html
When you add the indications that Android app downloads are now exceeding those on iOS, I think it would be remiss to ignore the Android Market.
http://articles.businessinsider.com/...ios-smartphone
And yet somehow this is profitable for Google.
Are you sure of that?
Please. There's little doubt the App Store is easier to develop for and makes more money...but how about something that has more realistic facts.
1) Quality. Until very, very recently (I'm talking last 6-9 months), apps on the Android Market paled in comparison to those on iOS. There was close to nothing worth buying. The same crap would not have sold on iOS either. Increasingly, the apps getting the best sales on Android, are the ones doing well on iOS as well.
2) Methods of Payment. Google still doesn't have the paid Android Market in half the countries in the world. And many of those that do have the paid market are limited to Google Checkout. There's nothing like the iTunes gift card to enable those without credit cards to buy apps.
3) Storage. This is a huge one. It certainly limits somebody like me (who has a good disposable income) from buying apps. A lot of apps aren't App2SD capable. And a lot of earlier phones (like my Nexus One) came with limited onboard memory. This is also why the absolute number of apps per device is lower on Android than iOS.
4) Try before you buy. I wonder how many iOS app sales are really satisfied customers. You can't get a refund on iOS. I can't tell you the number of times, I've bought an app and returned it because I found it worthless. Google did reduce the refund window to 15 minutes, which I think is rather scant. But that's still better than no opportunity to refund an app.
5) Google's own apps. Navigation apps are crazy expensive on iOS. They likely generate a good chunk of revenue themselves. But on Android, there's virtually no market for them because Maps Navigation is good enough for most users.
A lot of these issues are being resolved. And undoubtedly, the data is lagging. I expect app sales will pick up as a lot of these issues are addressed.
All this spewing about fragmentation, and many devices using old version of Android, simply misses the point, Android is the OS to beat, not IOS. I really liked all my IOS devices (phones and pods) but the best Android devices are now as good or better than IOS devices, and I am apparently not the only consumer to notice this. It is certainly not the media that is pushing Android either. For every positive comment about Android, I see on TV, there are 20 about the Iphone or Ipad, but somehow Android surges ahead anyway. Apple simply cannot compete with all the Android devices with a couple of phones and pads. We have reached the point where the two biggest Android phone makers now each sell more phones than Apple, and the way things are going there will soon be a couple more Android makers who sell more phones than Apple
So what is my point?, if Apple doesn't make a dramatic change to their marketing model IOS will either disappear or become a niche product. What I am afraid of is that users will simply not be willing to run Android on most of their devices while running IOS on a selct few. Somewhat like the VHS vs Beta or HDDVd vs. Bluray, or even Windows vs. OSX, is going