Google Android and iPhone Apps downloads are similar (Image) | Hacker News Reader

Google Android and iPhone Apps downloads are similar (Image)

androgeek.com

9 pointsstejules7 comments

The adMob report “January 2010 Mobile Metrics Report” shows that Google Android Apps downloads are approaching the iPhone app downloads

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Careful with conclusions. These graphs have been carefully prepared.

Notice how:

1. Paid apps and free apps are lumped together, you can't really see the difference in paid apps clearly. This is important from a developer standpoint — only paid apps will pay your salary.

2. iPhone OS is split into two platforms, while all Android devices are lumped together. Huh?

3. Everything is on a per-user basis. This is fine, but those are not the numbers you should be looking at if you are a developer (as most of us on Hacker News are). You want the aggregate market size. You want to plan your revenues. You don't want per-user statistics.

Yep. I'd go as far as saying that the fact that Android users, on average, are downloading a similar number of apps as iphone users is hardly interesting at all. The average smartphone user just seems to get around 9 free and one or two paid apps per month. What is important is the number of users that are doing this on a particular platform and maybe any associated trends, if they exist.

The correct headline for this information is "iphone and android users have similar app download behavior". The actual headline implies that Android app download volume would be similar to iphone volume. That would have been a bit of a sensation (to me)... But that's just not what happened.

On the contrary I'd say that the difference between 1.8 paid apps and 1.1 paid apps per month is pretty big.

Honestly I'm kind of surprised the Android numbers aren't higher, since Android device sales so far have presumably skewed heavily toward "geeks" who seem more likely to download stuff just to try it out.

Perhaps it's a function of there just being fewer apps available and, of those apps that are available, many may be coming from non-Android Market suppliers?

The PDF of the full report (much more interesting) is here:

http://metrics.admob.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/AdMob-Mo...

I'm not sure if it's worth re-submitting the AdMob post, but I did so here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1158960

Thats no surprise the only difference is with android you can get apps that get rejected from apple and more good free apps.

That's silly, it's not as if rejected App Store apps magically get rewritten and submitted to the Android Market, and the "more good free apps" comment is, so far as I can tell, pulled from thin air.

Besides, if it was that simple the Android numbers would beat the iPhone, and if you actually treat this as "App Store" vs "Android Market" it's more like 10.5 to 8.1 (respectively).

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