The iOS and Android App Economies | Hacker News Reader

The iOS and Android App Economies

daringfireball.net

55 pointstomerico45 comments

I do feel that Google is sending out the message, that "your" app will do better in sales, if it's provided for free. I don't think it's healthy for a developer who wants to start a company writing Android apps. This is what gruber is saying (at-least a bit). Every app we write has a value to it. I don't think 99 cents is the right price but free is definitely wrong. What happens when someone writes an app that blocks ads on the Android phone. Now, the developer is not making any money from his free apps. If giving things away for free becomes the norm in the Android app store, then it will end up hurting the developer and Google in the long run.

There is a safety net to selling an app for a price (not free), because the sales give an indication if the users like it or not and where to direct the energy.

Also, 37 signals doesn't believe in giving away apps for free.

What happens when someone writes an app that blocks ads on the Android phone

Already exists. AdFree. Requires a rooted phone. Blocks ads system wide. I actually found out about this because of people complaining about the obtrusive video ads in Angry Birds. I don't think the average person is going to root their phone just to block ads but as more people are driven to use alternative ROMs it may be an issue worth considering for developers.

Eh, better than the last go around on the topic. There is a cultural difference between the two. iOS does get a boost from the Mac culture: users tend to be affluent and very engaged in their devices. And those people are more likely to plunk down cash for apps. Gruber himself caters to and makes his money off this audience (funnily enough, from advertising more than selling product, but that is off topic). But I am with Wilson. The app ecomony is going to be like the web's. Cause paid software does not work for the masses. It works for enterprise, it works for the niches like gamers and Mac users, but it will not scale. You can already see this in the App Store's pricing race to the bottom. And if the iOS line is going to be more like the iPod than the Mac, the paid app ecomony is going to be seen as an amusing relic in a few years.

Also, I do not get why Gruber plays dumb about Angry Birds' profitablity on Android when that report about Rovio hitting about $1M/month on Android was on every tech site over the last few days.

> Also, I do not get why Gruber plays dumb about Angry Birds' profitablity on Android when that report about Rovio hitting about $1M/month on Android was on every tech site over the last few days.

Gruber has a very specific audience that he targets his blog posts towards, and he tells them what they want to hear.

"If Instagram were an Android exclusive rather than an iOS exclusive, would it have picked up 100,000 users in its first week and a million in its first month? No way, I say."

The Android version of Angry Birds got a million downloads on it's first day. Its existing hype and fandom obviously had a lot to do with that, but still don't see why the _No way_

if angry birds were an android exclusive would you have seen 1 mil downloads the first day?

I am so tired of these lengthy nitpicking posts about why in his opinion iPhone is simply better than Android. Really, who cares? Both platforms are great and have their advantages and problems. The market is certainly large enough for a couple of players to compete and innovate.

I'd actually wish for one or two other, even more open platforms such as Meego to get some traction.

Personally I am perplexed why Gruber's opinion of Android or the Android ecosystem has any relevance. He can wax poetic about new iOS features and iOS brilliance, singing to his choir, but he has no perspective or relevance to preach about Android. His overwhelming bias (and years or snark) has eliminated his ability to play the voice for any other platform.

No one should take that as anti-Gruber. It isn't. It's just that Gruber made his "iOS or nothing" bed over the past couple of years, leaving him looking a bit clownish when he tries to play peacemaker.

I don’t know how the purely ad-based Angry Birds is faring on Android. Perhaps Rovio (Angry Birds’s developer) will make even more money from ads on Android than they do from sales on iOS. We shall see.

We shall see indeed: "By end of year, we project earnings of over $1 million per month with the ad-supported version of Angry Birds" http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/03/angry-birds-android-1-milli...

I would imagine their ad earnings, at least in the short term, will receive a bump due to them adopting more intrusive forms of ads. The constant text ads in the corner were only moderately distracting and annoying (they tend to cover up parts of the screen you want to see, having them in one of the left hand corners would be better IMO). I noticed yesterday that every few minutes it now loads up a ~30-second video commercial. Some of them have still-image preludes that cannot be skipped, but so far there has been a "skip" button for all the video ads. The ads are pretty high-quality, movie trailers and professionally-done commercials, but it's much, much more disruptive to the play experience than it was before.

I still enjoy the game quite a bit, but I'd much rather just pay the 99 cents than burn 45 seconds every 5 minutes to watch an ad.

Does anyone know how much they make from the paid for iOS version?

They sold between six and seven million copies of the paid version between the release (December 2009) and September 2010 [1]. Rovio sold the game for between $1 and $2 (the regular price was $2 but they had at least one 50% off sale and it now seems to be down to $1 permanently).

If we assume an average revenue of $1.05 per copy ($1.50 minus Apple’s 30% cut) and 6.5 million sold copies in nine months their revenue would be about three quarters of a million per month.

The above linked TechCrunch article has a seemingly more recent but unsourced number of twelve million copies sold. That would put the revenue at about one million per month.

I’m not sure how accurate that estimate is, though. They sold a million copies of their Halloween version in only six days [2], that’s quite a bit more. (If I remember correctly there was no free version of the Halloween special.)

[1] http://mobilewebgo.com/how-did-angry-birds-become-blockbuste...

[2] http://www.rovio.com/index.php?mact=Blogs,cntnt01,showentry,...

So in essense, they are getting approximately the same revenue from iOS's 'purchase the app' as from Android 'ad revenue' model. Interesting, thanks.

up till now about 4 million download from iOS ( in the same article mentioned). so about 4 million

Wow, I thought they had sold a lot more on iOS. So in one month of ad revenue on Android has brought in 25% of total iOS sales. If this ad revenue is consistent that's pretty incredible news for Google. It will have made clear that ad revenue on mobile devices is where the money is (and with Google being an advertising company, this is great news).

I believe that figure includes Angry Bird HD sales, which retails for $4.99, not $0.99

The article says 12 million paid downloads, right?

there is another source telling that they sold out 30 million downloads /year. so the profit must be really high.

(less 30%)

The numbers for android are appealing as a third party developer, but how much money is being spent in the android app store? Ads are viable, but hardly ideal for all types of apps.

mostly android app earn income via ads , sales in google app store are really bad. no body is buying.

This is at the heart of the problem. Nitpicking at Gruber specific points is one thing, but the fact is that paid apps on the Android store are getting nowhere. Arguing that "this doesn't matter because free is the way to go" is a reasonable opinion to hold, but misses the point. Android developers don't get to make a choice about that whatever their opinion, while iOS developers do. The counter argument is that as these platforms mature and become more capable the apps will become more functional and sophisticated, with attached services and customers will be more willing to pay for them. iOS developers have a shot at making that future happen, unless things change Android devs don't.

Do you have any basis for your fact that "paid apps on the Android store are getting nowhere"?

I've seen a few things suggesting lower sales rates on Android, but since almost none of them adjusted for installed base, I'd be wary of drawing any strong conclusions. But even if they are correct in their inferences, they were still suggesting simply lower sales (e.g. a third or half iOS) not that no-one was buying apps at all. It's hardly a black and white picture, particularly with the introduction of iAds by Apple.

Probably one of the better articles written by Gruber in a year or two. Well balanced, hit on the strengths and weaknesses of both platforms, and definitely chose his words carefully to not try and seem biased to either camp.

Nicely thought-out and researched pieces are what we need more of, with less argument re-wording and throwing numbers around to try and play up your favorite platform. I hope Gruber's posts continue in this direction.

Definitely one of his better articles. But I think he still has on his Apple blinders. He asks the wrong question still.

He asks, "Why doesn't Android have X, Y, Z?". Rather the question should be, "At what rate is Android picking up X, Y, Z?"

Furthermore, he hints at the cultural divide, but misses the big motivator. Android exists to get you on the web. iPhone exists to get you to buy Apple product(s). I'm sure Google would be just as happy if every app moved to the web, and app stores disappeared. I'm less certain Apple would be as happy.

He doesn't miss it. Perhaps you didn't read till the end.

The economy for Android apps may well trend toward resembling the economy of the web. I think that’s the mindset with which Android was designed. But I don’t think the iOS App Store resembles the web economy at all. Isn’t that the whole point, the reason Apple created the App Store in the first place? Apple’s pre-App Store “just write mobile web apps for Mobile Safari” developer story for the iPhone in 2007 was unsatisfying, both for users and developers.

....

The differences between the iOS App Store and Android Market are a microcosm of the differences between Apple and Google. Apple is a retailer, a purveyor of well-crafted goods that people will line up to purchase. Google is an advertising company that builds popular services that command large audiences.

You're right, I missed this. Gruber should really front-load his articles with punchline, rather than expecting people to make it through his text... and while this was better than most of his articles, I think he's expecting too much for any non Apple fanboy to make it through to the end of even this ;-)

No one seems to remember that a good part of the reason why iPhone had good developer support from day one was that it was a new start for developers with obscure skills on a dead-end platform.

Yes, I know Cocoa and Objective-C are cool now, but Mac OS X has rebounded partly because of the success of the iPhone. At the time those developers were getting squeezed by Apple themselves on one side with high quality, bundled, often free apps and free web apps on the other side.

That is why the web apps only message got boo-ed by an audience of Cocoa developers, it wasn't an unbiased appraisal of what was best for either Apple, the iPhone or its customers, it was the sound of people having a potential escape hatch slammed shut in their face.

> obscure skills on a dead-end platform.

I seem to remember the buzz on the mac platform in 2006 being about it's high rate of adoption in hacker and web-development circles, not to mention surprise about how quickly it was being adopted on college campuses. In 2007, the campus tech purchasing board I was on was seriously considering chucking their Compaq licence to dual-boot mac-minis. This was coming from senior IT staff, all of who were anti-Apple to the point of blocking Mail.app from wireless networks.

The mac was doing well before the iPhone came out.

Yes, I bought a Mac for similar reasons in 2001 but you have to remember that these people were buying it for programming Unix, Java and Web Development rather than Cocoa apps.

Similarly, the college campus users were buying it for Web access and Microsoft Office without worrying about viruses (plus they look cool and/or expensive). Again, native Cocoa wasn't really a factor.

I wasn't talking about the Mac doing well (though I'd argue with that as well), but about Cocoa developers doing well.

Wil Shipley used this image in a 2005 WWDC talk to rebut the claims that Cocoa developers weren't doing well:

http://i.imgur.com/Q9c13.jpg

http://wilshipley.com/blog/2005/06/student-talk-from-wwdc-20...

Agreed. General Mac buzz picked up significantly when Apple announced the switch to Intel and the first MacBook was released.

mac is good platform but rarely adopted because of the cost. i still prefer PC for its unbelievable cheap price

beside, i have a macbook pro and a wins work station. i'm still checking if i can install mac osx on my PC hardware.

The mac was doing well before the iPhone came out.

In this case, I think "well" means, better than NeXT. They were doing well like WP7 is doing well. It's doing well for where they were at, but MacOS is still largely an orphaned dev platform.

"It’s highly doubtful something like Rage HD is even possible on any Android device today." - Can someone explain why an iPhone is more powerful than "any Android" device?

I don't think iPhone hardware is more powerful than Android hardware, but games support in the Android SDK is lacking.

Currently you need to use their weird NDK and wrap it with Java code. For example, there's no way to play audio without using the Java SDK.

Many of these problems have been fixed in Android 2.3, but it takes ages for updates to ship out to the majority of devices (a good chunk of devices still don't have Froyo).

It's more of a focus thing for Android - not all people put the ability to play Rage HD as their first requirement when buying a smart phone. So when Sony-Ericsson decided to do a portable gaming machine that can also act as a phone - 2.3 focus shifted to fixing up the gaming portion of Android. It's an organic, grow-as-you-go growth. In a way it is more sensible.

The other thing is that there is lot of choice with Android - $29 LG Optimus to the upcoming Playstation Phone. People who just need a phone that can browse and email and occasionally play Angry Birds - LG phone is for them. People who want a portable gaming device which can be used as a phone - they can get the PS Phone and it will come with Gingerbread.

I don't think that Android not having this or not having that is a real problem. If there is demand, some vendor will fix what is required, push more capable hardware etc and people will have more choices. So far the Android users don't seem to be demanding RageHD style games - that's all.

The other issue is that there is no "Android Hardware" -- the older or lower-end devices might not be able to power it. Then, though, it would only support a subset of the devices, and the more expensive ones at that, and Id is blamed, not the device itself.

I don't have a problem with the author commenting on fragmentation or API issues increasing dev time. Does Rage HD run on all iPhones?

My comment was due to the way it's stated, "even possible on any Android device today", meaning that even with excess dev time, the application could not run on the newest Android device.

Good point. I misread that.

RAGE works on all the iPhones that support iOS 4, which excludes the original iPhone and iPod touch. However, the hardware on those are reasonably identical to the second generation of devices, so that restriction is an arbitrary one by Apple.

"even possible on any Android device today".

This is probably true. The fact that the current Android SDK requires wrapping OpenGL calls in a Java layer is cited by developers (it's mentioned up-thread) as a hindrance in writing highly performant games. Gruber chose his words carefully though, this is true today but the next Android update supposedly fixes this. We'll see.

Carmack doesn't seem too keen on Android:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/11/post-8.ars/

Consider his bias, though. Carmack's ideal world is one where everyone has one console, one phone, and one PC. Android offers him nothing but extra pain over the possibility of every human being carrying an iOS device.

What's good for Carmack isn't good for everyone else.

I want bolded headings to guide my scanning.

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