Android Overtakes Apple with 44% Worldwide Share of Mobile App Downloads

Apple's marketshare for computers priced over $1000 is >90%, meanwhile the largest personal computer manufacturer in the world is looking to exit the business. I think this is a harbinger for what iOS and Android will become.

There is definitely some maturing required to occur on the Android side and I think this is represented by the continuing hesitation of pay app developers on the platform. The article didn't shed light on the revenue figures but rather concentrated on downloads only, which as per your experience can be misleading. Additionally the split between paid/unpaid and the average revenue on paid apps would be the meat necessary to attract developers. I feel this may be a long-running issue for Android as one of its primary attractions for users is the low acquisition cost, thus it's marketed to a consumer who is less likely to spend. (Seconded by the high piracy rates on Android.) This creates a cyclical issue, the android app store quality becomes diluted by lack of signature apps, so consumers become less likely to purchase apps from a store where they are accustomed to receiving poorer quality applications. So developers don't consider Android the first-platform of choice, thus perpetuating the cycle. For consumers buying become a risk exercise, thus pushing more favour to the ease of piracy, and developers to ultimately consider the platform secondary.

Actual Android penetration is also difficult to gauge, while iOS has predictable hardware, retail and pricing. Android-based phones have received significant sales promotion offers (e.g. 2 for 1 is quite common), the models available fit across a price and technical spectrum from top notch to crappy-phone-that-can't-do-much. I believe this leads to why app downloads are lower per device. (When the randomness of consumers should yield a similar app-download figure, perhaps even slightly skewed towards Android due to the larger amount of test and free software available.) Instead we see Android lagging despite having significantly more devices in the wild. (This doesn't build confidence for quality developers to make Android a priority destination.)

On the other hand Google's priority is to ensure ubiquity (whether good or bad phones), such that their ad revenue based services don't miss the smartphone revolution. Their strategy for this is effective, it's reminiscent of windows vs mac os. In the end iOS isn't Android's problem - Apple's iOS strategy will always be selling less units than Android, but as we've seen in computer manufacturers it may not be about how many you sell, but rather how profitable it is to sell at all.

Side note: Unfortunately for everyone, this means there will always be Android/iOS flame wars in the same way we've come to expect Windows/Mac OS/Linux flame threads. The plus side is that innovation will be continuous for both platforms.

Are you selling Android apps in the Market? If you are, have you experienced any changes in peoples propensity to purchase Android apps in the Market?

No, that's not actually the case. Or at least, not from that report. The Millennial numbers are about one thing alone: the Millennial network. If we knew that the install base for Millennial-provided ads exactly mirrored the install base for smartphones, then yes, but: that's not actually the case, as different ad nets are used to different extents on different devices. For example, you could put out a press release trumpeting iOS 100% domination of mobile ads if you just used numbers from iAds...

Not worthless, still a very interesting statistic.

There is not just one good statistic, and all the rest are useless. Different statistics tell different things.

Ya, they'll get that just by the volume of Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc. downloads

Considering many of the top grossing apps on Android (and iOS as well) are free with in app purchasing, I am starting to believe paid app downloads are going to increasingly become a niche market for apps.

I also wonder how ad-supported apps affect these numbers. If apps are free but ad-supported, there's more incentive to download and try them out, even if you only ever use them once and then delete them.

It sounds like they are including third party app stores, presumably including Amazon's:

Being a free platform has expanded the Android device install base, which in turn has driven growth in the number of third party multi-platform and mobile operator app stores

The audience for this metric isn't consumers choosing whether to get an iPhone or an Android phone. It's developers choosing whether to support iOS, Android or both. For that audience, this is a very relevant metric. It's also a fairly objective one.

(Of course there's a second-order effect: users will choose a platform partly according to how well it's supported by developers. But anyone choosing which phone to buy now on the basis of this metric is betting on a longer term than they'll probably keep that phone for.)