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Comment by mevile | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why Android continues to do so badly in comparison to iOS revenue numbers. As an Android user it's very disappointing. Bigger user base, but almost inconsequential when it comes to revenue. I'm surprised game developers support Android at all, I want the games that are on iOS for my phone but even I'm not sure it's worth it.

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This is just my guess, but Android phones are on average much cheaper than iPhones. An iPhone costs $400-800, the only Android phones in that range are the very top of the line (Samsung S7, LG G5). Most of the huge Android user base is on inexpensive phones sold for $0-100 on contract.

While you can't say for sure that Android users have less money, you can say they're spending less money on their phones which likely means they'll spend less on apps on that phone.

This is partially because it is much, much, easier to pirate premium games on Android than it is on iOS. There are tons of 3rd party APK sites that are well trafficked. On F2P the platforms are much more equally split.

Also, as Android has a higher footprint in Asia, making games that resonate with the Japanese/Korean audience is pretty important, and I'm not sure if Monument Valley qualifies.

This is 100% true. Advertising-based revenue models are far superior on Android due to piracy. I have a Google alert set up for our games, and updates hit APK sites less than 24 hours after hitting the play store.

That would be super frustrating. Is there just no recourse for sites like this? I assume they are hosted overseas, but do hosts not respond at all to complaints?

You'd be playing wack-a-mole so hard that your legal team would cost more than any gains. I had similar google alerts as the previous poster, and the sites would have every single popular game -- I don't think anyone fought it effectively, although I never did a true survey.

> This is partially because it is much, much, easier to pirate premium games on Android than it is on iOS.

While that's true, that's no different from PC games and they still make considerably more than android games do. There's definitely an X factor here.

I think the stigma with pirating a premium PC game is higher than "just" pirating an Android game. I know a lot of people who see mobile apps as disposable and so have no problem downloading them for free. A PC game like Doom carries a different weight to it that makes these same people at least consider the premium purchase. Not saying it makes any sense, but that's been my observation.

It's certainly more difficult to pirate a PC game than an android game. Maybe the difficulty of figuring out how to run cracks and the fear of accidentally downloading a virus is the X factor. The whole process is much easier, less riskier and overall feels "nicer" than pirating a PC game or app, that's for sure.

Brr. My phone is even more personal than my computer. There is no way I'm putting a pirated APK on it, considering how easy it is to insert arbitrary code into APKs: http://www.georgiecasey.com/2013/03/06/inserting-keylogger-c...

It could do better if Google would pull their head out of the ass and bring Play gift cards to countries where there are less credit cards used on Play because people in majority don't have one by default (East and Central Europe for example). And it's not just you can't buy one, you can't redeem one bought in a neighbour country as well, you have to either do it in the country or use a VPN, which is batshit insane to me.

At the other hand iTunes cards are basically everywhere.

Because that's how you fight piracy - making possible that people can buy your shit easier in the first place.

Do you honestly believe that the reason that MV is making 4x more from iOS devices than Android, is a lack of gift cards?

If the success or failure of your software marketplace comes down to a lack of gift cards, you have some serious problems.

It's not a sole reason, but let's start bringing more options to people to buy the apps/content in the first place.

Same thing with movie/music/TV piracy:

- either services aren't available,

- they are but the selection is gimped in dragonland thanks to licenses,

- and or again the only way to purchase subscription is with a CC.

You're hearing "gift" and imagining this is about birthday parties. Think "prepaid cards" if you like. Imagine a country with more fraud and less consumer credit availability than yours.

Well, how else are those people supposed to purchase apps?

What you're saying may be true in general, but the numbers here are saying something different. MV just wasn't that popular on the Android platform to begin with compared with its popularity on iOS, about a million Android users next to almost 12 million iOS users. But the revenue per Google Play download is over 2 1/2 times that of the revenue per iOS download. So, each Android customer is punching far above their own weight.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't iDreamSky one of China's largest third-party Android app stores?

You could say that each Google Play customer is punching above their weight, but GooglePlay+Amazon+AmazonUnderground+iDreamSky technically means that Android makes up 58% of the customers and only about 1/4 of the revenue compared to iOS.

From what I'm observing, cheap Android phones are prevalent among users who just want a phone, but don't care about the whole apps thing (often even don't have data plan enabled).

Android users don't but apps. The entire Android echo system is setup around ads, and ads don't have the return of paying for an app.

I buy apps so what you're saying is BS.

Android users are way, way poorer than iOS users on average, and I suspect that willingness to purchase an app or game correlates very strongly with willingness to pay for an iPhone. The difference is even more skewed outside the US.

http://www.comscore.com/lat/Insights/Blog/Android-vs-iOS-Use...

To be honest, I usually expect my Android apps to be free, and there's huge friction for paying for anything because Google doesn't support standard payment methods in my country (heck, in my continent, South America), they keep expecting international credit cards which almost no-one has.

What are standard payment methods in your country?

The most widely used in Uruguay are two payment companies called Abitab and RedPagos, which receive payments in-person.

There's also an electronic transfer system managed by the ATM company called Banred.

In Brazil, the most common system is "Boleto Bancario".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boleto

I understand that my country is tiny and no sane company would implement payment systems for us, but the use of Boleto would probably increase the Android app market by a lot, currently people use hacks like buying gift cards through the eBay equivalent with Boleto, but it obviously implies a lot of friction:

http://adrenaline.uol.com.br/forum/threads/ha-algum-metodo-d...

There's an interesting lesson in that a local company called wOOw beat Groupon head-to-head in the deals market simply by enabling the popular payment methods, while Groupon was unable to adapt to the local conditions and kept asking for credit cards. Groupon ended up closing in Uruguay.

http://www.elobservador.com.uy/el-mercado-los-descuentos-onl...

Thanks for the details! I've actually been very interested in Uruguay since reading about José Mujica!

I think it's because the majority of Android users are in developing countries. They probably own these phones just to have access to the internet.

If you were to go into /r/Android and read the comments on any Monument Valley story, you'll find a lot of people who seem to suffer from a persecution complex. They claim they'll never support a developer who "treats them like second class citizens". They'll justify their piracy of everything by saying this.

This is generally true but there are some exceptions. I've read multiple reports of devs saying that their revenue on Android matches or exceeds their revenue on iOS. I'm not sure what the differentiator is here but it does happen.

Advertisements within apps, perhaps?

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