A Few Android App Developers Rake in Millions | Hacker News Reader

A Few Android App Developers Rake in Millions

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48 pointsgarribas13 comments

More than a few lottery winners rake in millions of dollars every week.

The fact that you can only browse apps by total popularity or most recently submitted sure makes the market feel like a lottery.

Are any HN'ers making livable money off Android apps? My experience so far suggests that even if iOS is a better money maker in general it's also very competitive at this point and hard to break into, so I'm considering trying some Android apps too.

Is Android actually less competitive? (That's not a rhetorical question.)

It seems like there are lots of developers who would naturally prefer developing on Android to developing on iOS. Additionally, the recent stream of developers getting more and more pissed off at Apple probably has been resulting in at least some switching, albeit not the exodus that some of those pissed off people predicted. (The allure of big money trumps the fear of frustration -- and Apples store certainly has the allure of money.)

My impression is that iOS still has more developers, many of whom are producing work of much higher quality and polish than the average Android dev. That's just my subjective judgement though.

The Android audio APIs are still too primitive for a bunch of apps I want to write but there are others that should be ok. Maybe I'll test the waters.

I'd argue that in some ways it's more competitive...perhaps more price competitive. Free apps do very very well on Android. You can nicely outfit an Android phone with tons and tons of pretty high quality apps for $0. Breaking past that has got to be very hard.

Another problem that Android has is with the availability of the Market. Right now there are not many countries where you can purchase apps. Which is irritating for a lot of users who buy these phones, only to find out that they cannot purchase apps. So most try to find free apps. Some root their phones and pirate them.

Sure, I got a job making Android apps. The market is pretty hot right now.

I've been a developer for iPhone/Android for a couple years now. Making livable money on iPhone, just barely breaking even, if not losing money, on Android.

- Your best shot at Android is to make an app that doesn't push the hardware. We built a high-end game, but we couldn't afford to keep supporting the latest devices. In fact, our game crashes hard on the Xoom/Gingerbread, but it's not making enough money to justify a fix. Fragmentation is a huge problem on Android, so for indie devs, staying low-end is the only real alternative.

- Our games have been featured by both Apple and Android, and been in both top selling lists. Our Apple revenue was easily 50x our Android revenue.

- I think you'll have better luck from a free, ad-supported app instead of a paid app on Android.

- If you want to make livable money, then your options are: (1) get as iOS app featured by Apple, or in the top 200 apps for a long time, or (2) create a stable of smaller apps that work well on all iOS/Android and don't need to be ported/tested on each individual device.

As you said, with Android the market basically dictates a free, ad-supported version coupled with a paid, ad-free version. Trying to go paid-only in a climate of apps running on an OS that both place emphasis on "open" and "free" is suicide.

Interesting. Most of the apps I'm excited to build for tablets are graphics & sound-intensive, which is why I've stuck to iOS so far. If I get some good ideas for something less hardware-intensive maybe I'll try something on Android.

Getting into the top 200 seems tough.

Yep. Been living off it since 09.

That's why I formed the Android Developers Union: http://andevuni.org - We need better conditions!

I'm one of the developers mentioned in the article (Eddie Kim). Not sure why they included me because I'm not making millions. With that said, I'm making a pretty decent living from my Android apps.

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