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Comment by jokermatt999 | Hacker News Reader

I'm an Android fan, but marketshare between Android and iPhone doesn't tell the whole story, at least for developers. I haven't seen numbers on it in a while, but iOS is much better for devs in terms of making money. iOS users buy more apps, and if you're developing to make money, that's pretty good deciding factor.

Of course, may not want to develop for Apple for other reasons (store policies, not wanting to get randomly rejected, etc), but I'd assume money is the driving factor for many.

Now, that isn't to say that Android won't be making good profits. It's just that Apple has a cash cow with their App Store's 30% cut (and now mandatory payments in app). Actual market share matters less, because that's not necessarily where they're continuing to make money.

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     iOS users buy more apps

I own both an iPhone and an Android.

I haven't bought any Android apps because Android apps are crap and I won't pay money for shitty weekend hacks.

     if you're developing to make money, that's pretty 
     good deciding factor

That's a pretty weak argument -- do the math, most apps on iTunes aren't even making up for sunken costs.

Quite the contrary I would say, since the Android Marketplace is filled with crappy apps, you can create value quite easily.

Wow...troll much?

I also own both Android and iOS phones.

and I've also never purchased an app on Android.

So either we're both under the bridge, or you've mis-labeled the troll. (Look in the mirror.)

I've owned 2 different iPod Touches over the past 2-3 years, and I've owned an Android phone for a year and a half. I've bought apps for both platforms.

The plural of anecdote is not data. There are apps worth paying for on Android. But for whatever reason -- maybe it's quality, maybe it's customer sentiment -- iOS users tend to spend more money in the App Store than Android users spend in the Market.

iOS may be more valuable to developers today, but if marketshare keeps developing according to the current trend, there will be an inflection point.

It's widely reported that iOS users are more likely to spend money on apps than Android users. Let's assume that the percentage of users spending money on apps for iOS vs Android is something like 80% vs 40%. For a developer this means, ceteris paribus, there need to be twice as many people on Android to make the same amount of money he would make in the Appstore.

If you look at marketshare trends, Android is slowly getting to the point where you stand to make as much money developing for Android as you would developing for iOS. In fact, if trends hold, there will be more money in Android than in iOS in the long run, making it the logical step for developers to jump ship (or at least develop for both platforms).

This is why market share matters.

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