Android App Revenue Only 7% of iOS Revenue? Not So Fast | Hacker News Reader

Android App Revenue Only 7% of iOS Revenue? Not So Fast

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43 pointsnextparadigms46 comments

I have run endless tests comparing Android revenue to iOS revenue. It's pretty difficult to make money from Android with the same apps. Either with Ads or Paid - the Android version of the exact same app gets less downloaded (even if free), the revenue from Ads dies out quicker and if it's paid, it will get bought much, much less.

I believe the core problem is that there is no clear discovery mechanism. With iOS people use iTunes to sync. They open the app store and can try to discover new and unknown apps that happen to be in the charts. The same does not exist in Android. New apps don't get discovered.

Almost all apps in Android making money are externally marketed or viral. Making an app for android is like making a website - nobody will come unless you do something else. iOS however, does the marketing for you.

That's a very good point. A few other points:

- Anecdotally, some (most?) of the "normal users" (non techies) I have seen use their android, don't have their Google account set up on the device. I would find it very interesting to know what percentage of people actually end up doing that, because on Android it's optional.

- If you don't have your Google account set up on your phone, you can't access the marketplace and some people don't understand how that works and what the marketplace has got to do with their Google account. Normal users associate their phone with their cell provider and don't even realize that Android is made by Google, etc.

I simply think that not that many people are installing and setting up apps on their phones.

This will probably change in the future. Ironically, this is very similar to the Mac vs PC wars in the 90s, but my belief is that Android will be the dominant player in a few years and even though, the market is small (so far), that that will change a lot.

Besides.. having a smaller piece of a bigger pie seems like worthwhile in the long run.

I was under the impression that Ice Cream Sandwich will require user to enter the credit card and associate it with their gmail account to activate the device? Is that true? I remember reading something about this.

That … seems stupid? And I don’t really think that can be true.

I don’t even have a credit card (like many Europeans I only have a bank card) and I’m also not enthusiastic about giving my payment information for just using something or even just looking around.

I found the article that I was referring too. It's not required but there will be prompt for it.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/17/ice-cream-sandwich-prompts-...

Won't this change as the need for iTunes and external synchronization goes away? Apple has made a big deal about future iOS devices not requiring a PC for sync. Does the app store on iOS devices provide similar discovery mechanisms or will iOS apps soon find themselves in a similar position as Android?

I wouldn't think so. The only thing that's changing is the requirement to plug an iOS device into an iTunes-running PC to do OS updates and backups.

And there's a very large contingent of users who rarely (if ever) did those things after the initial setup anyway. So if cutting that cord was going to negatively effect sales, I'd expect that's long since been reflected in the numbers.

All that said, I have no idea what discovery mechanisms people think are so key in iTunes vs Android market. The only apps I "discovered" via iTunes were in the top lists and dev picks; features I'm pretty sure every app store has in stand-alone marketplace apps, on-device apps and web stores.

The big difference to me, between iTunes and Android marketplace is that when I search for an app in iTunes I don't really even think about getting the 'right' one. Sure, there are some "Angry Bird Cheats!" sorts of apps out there, but precious few apps are of the shameful knockoff/deliberately misleading variety.

With Android marketplace, last I waded through it, there remained significant confusion over knockoffs and misleading apps and non-trivial effort required to try to ensure that I'd found the 'right' app and then all sorts of doubt raised by those UAC prompts. (why would a social game want access to my call log? was this really the right app? what the hell did i just install?)

If Google really wanted to sell more apps, I think they'd clean that up. But (as I've said before) I get this feeling that Google really doesn't care for apps. And would much prefer it if people just used the browser.

With iOS 5, both OS updates and backups can happen without plugging into iTunes.

This is nothing more than an unsourced fanboy response to a poorly created article.

This guy seems to be endlessly harping on Android market share as if having the most users will trick Android developers into forgetting that a much smaller slice of a soon-to-be-larger pie actually is willing to pay for your apps...

I get his argument that a more fair comparison would include Google Ad revenue / iAd revenue, instead of just app sales.

But the only party stopping that comparison here is really Google. They're super tight lipped about the performance of their app store.

And it doesn't take a wild guess to wonder why.

"But the only party stopping that comparison here is really Google." When Google would release the stats, would you believe them?

There are a lot of stories about comparisons lately. I've seen a lot on HN and here is one from Spacetime Studios (Pocket Legends): http://blogs.computerworld.com/17941/android_ios_app_profit I think it's a fair comparison. The game got very good reviews on both platforms.

But I also like the last quote: "In some ways, it's kind of like the wild, wild West" It's a new area and maybe it's too soon to make any meaningful conclusions.

For what its worth, this data might play a role in debate but doesn't provide proof either way:

Our app is #8 in our category in the App Store and #13 in for the category in the Android Marketplace. It is free and has no advertisements; only available in US / Canada markets for both. We only get about ~1250 downloads a day on Android and about ~3500 downloads a day on iOS.

With that skew in raw downloads combined with a variance of stereotypical buying habits on each platform it is easy to see a way where iOS revenues could outweigh Android revenues by a lot.

From our standpoint, at our scale, advertisements are almost worthless to the amount it would hurt our brand. No agency, in Google itself, has shown us revenue predictions that make our mouth water. We have also experimented with a few direct placements (heavily target to our audience, and we did the design work of the advertisements ourselves) but will likely not continue with that in the future because of how bad they perform.

But you're using the app as a hook to get them to purchase something else right or why bother? Or are you saying that loseit has no monetization strategy?

Because I would have thought that making money out of a weight loss app should be easy. You're talking about a market that will pay silly amounts just for the idea of being thin. That you see people advertising all the time for products to solve the problem because there's so much money in it.

Right now we make very little money from the advertisements and / or products we sell (We sell Fitbits, Withings scales, our book, tshirts). We have a strategy that we have not executed on yet but have been heads down working on for the last few months.

You might be surprised by the buying behaviors of "Do-It-Yourself" weight loss users compared to the rest of the industry. Much of users come from Weight Watchers because they don't want to pay anymore. Moreover, no one goes to WW thinking they are going to get anything for free, where 100% of users come to us thinking they will not be spending a penny. This is something we will work and try to rite the ship as we execute our plans. Once we do that, we will have the other half of the data that I mentioned (in my original comment) about which one brings in more money. As of right now, Lose It! is free and we lose money as we build our platform and brand.

If you don't like the other guys numbers back them up with your own. Don't just go nuh uh. From the post, Android is at 55% market and 1:1 installed base with iOS so.... nothing.

He just doesn't like that iOS had a 1 year headstart on Android and had 3 months longer to get App store sales (july-september).

We sell the same apps on Android and iOS.

Android revenue is 5% of iOS revenue.

1) Are your placement & review scores on both app stores comparable?

2) Do you have any data on paid versus free/ad-supported apps?

1) If it's the same app (like the OP says) this is irrelevant. Even if it isn't positioned high on the Android store - doesn't matter. For the OP if he makes the app that he makes - iOS makes him money.

2) What kind of data? Data for his app? OP says he _sells_ on both platforms. Some of us may not like the idea of ads on our apps (somewhat like some of us don't like ads on our personal sites). But you may be correct in suggesting ads work better on Android than paid apps.

Of course the rating and chart position are relevant!

If you want to deduce something from an anecdote like this, these details are absolutely critical. Otherwise you can't distinguish between the performance difference being due to something random (maybe app got featured in one of the stores, causing a positive feedback cycle via the charts), something specific to the app (maybe the app was ported badly to one of the platforms), or something that applies to a wide range of similar apps (maybe the users on one platform just never buy anything).

If you find out that the app is #10 on the relevant list in one store and #1000 on the other, one of the first two options seems a lot more likely than the third one. If it has great ratings in one store and mediocre ones in the other, that's rather suggestive of the second option, etc.

You say that for the OP only the amount of money he's making matters. Maybe that's true for this single app, but it's not true when making the platform choice any future apps. For those decisions, it's critical to have more understanding of why the app performed badly on Android.

OP says apps (plural). Your whole argument is based on the probability that one single app was a an outlier.

I'm arguing nothing about the particular case. My issue is with your assertion that the only the amount of money the app (your singular) makes is relevant.

1) Ratings slightly higher on the Android store. 2) Both are paid

We sell a relatively expensive ($15) niche app. The Android app outsells the iPhone app 2 to 1. (We believe it is due to the fact that there are far fewer high quality niche apps in the Android Market.)

We also sell the same apps on both platforms and on Android our sales fluctuate between 40 and 60% of the volume we sell on iOS.

There has been a significant amount of growth in the Android sales over the last 3-4 months where it grew from around 20% to where it is now.

The author is hopeful at best, even to concede each single tenuous argument made, the article still doesn't make a convincing story. To consider even the most simple counter points makes the article entirely feeble. (Does the author believe ad-supported apps are unique to the marketplace?)

iOS's high revenue isn't chance: The iOS store is a stronger performer due to not only a better demographic positioning, but it's an extension of the worlds largest music store, it's a longer-term cultivation, it's run by a company with very-high consumer trust, apple seed programs and provide continuous incentives for developers, apple's yields massive advertising and events programs and apple's incredibly high penetration due to inclusion with iTunes and installation on all iOS devices, are each very strong reasons on it's own.

Meanwhile, those factors do make it a popular choice for developers who are wanting mainstream consumers, but this doesn't leave android in the dark. Android can tout greater variance/complexity of applications due to more lax regulation by google. Such as porn, apps that are counter the OS's UX, apps that reproduce functionality or overtake certain OS features and of course simple apps.

Millions of increasingly fragmented Android devices out there will not make the marketplace more attractive to developers. Plus Google is only half interested, their goal is to get as many Android devices out there, to ensure Google search and services are the only choice for consumers as this is their business model. The emergence of a future run by smart phones where search was commoditised by the phone provider was the motivation for Google into making Android.

I don't think you really answered anything from his article except the mention of the ad-supported applications, which you are correct if impolite about.

The rest of your post seems to be filled with content you've prepared ahead of time?

For example: 'iOS high revenue is not chance', 'iOS is a popular choice', 'android is fragmented'. OK. But, we've all heard those before, and they are not confronted by the article.

What was confronted by the article was deliberate skewing of charts - percentage gaming - in order to show unflattering android numbers instead of actual relevant real-time data.

The author suggests that this is misleading, and it is exactly that. It is the sort of political tactic which turns this:

"Do you think it's a good idea that children should pass if they have bad test scores?"

Into this:

"89% of people polled supported No Child Left Behind."

When the androids authority's best evidence that Android marketplace is not terrible is to present and tare down a straw man argument that's simply not convincing. If there was a good news story supported by actual income he could have said so, but he did not.

There I just refuted his entire argument. Now to support my point of view I could list all the reasons why Android fails but then you would attack them and miss the point.

PS: idspispopd was being more polite but he used the same argument.

I really want to see income levels as well. There's no denying that the article didn't retort with actual data, a huge flaw. I even went to the end of the article expecting to see a data-driven response, and was disappointed that there wasn't one.

If you are interested in my honest opinion, I don't feel like you've refuted anything. May I remind you, the article pointed out the skewed nature of the charts and claimed that was misleading. I think that in order to refute that, you would have to supply reasoning as to why it was not misleading or skewed. Don't you agree?

I will concede that if you feel like this is a faulty stance and you don't think you need to refute it, that is fine. Why refute something you believe to be patently false?

It feels like you're attempting to champion something here, and you expect me to do the same. That seems to be the central theme with a lot of the responses I'm seeing here.

Why so defensive? What's wrong with someone pointing out bad data? Isn't that something worth looking into?

Without actual numbers nothing was refuted in the article either. The original article is trying to say that the 7% of revenues numbers could be wrong by pointing out some flaws in the data collection. But since it doesn't have its own numbers to counter with then the whole thing is a bunch of handwaving. Its strange to call someone out for "not refuting" an article which doesn't actually refute anything itself. Its like asking someone to prove a negative.

I think he could have pointed out the error in a tweet and I would have been fine if someone had linked such a tweet.

Having read a little more I was expecting a little more. And sure he presented a new idea, but it's a well worn argument with plenty of evidence on both sides of the issue. When you break it down there are two arguments one of which was well supported and another that was left hanging. And leaving me hanging makes me feel that the first point was simply a straw man being torn down which left a bitter taste in my mouth.

PS: I have little skin in this game, Edit: I suspect Android may reach parity with Apple, but this article did little but annoy me and convince me that we are far from that parity. aka years vs months.

I don't know if android and iOS will be matched any time soon. One day, cars could fly (more frequently than they do now).

I'm with you on the essence of the article being worth a blurb or a micropost of some sort. It was an objection article, without any substantiative data.

I think my root motivation here was the desire to see that substantiative data, which I think another poster in this comments has provided.

The numbers ARE pretty low in comparison by that data point.

The point of the article was that the original "study" it discusses was biased and incorrect. He suggested ways that the study could be improved. Unfortunately, the article doesn't present data for these measurements.

Your posts have not added nor taken anything away this article. Your parroting the popular opinion based on anecdotal facts is not helpful to anyone.

But exactly did the charts skew? Marketplace and App store opened around the same time frame (September and July 2008, respectively). So your saying they should disregard Android 1.5-2.1 data as well as iPhone 2.0-3.1 data because it doesn't support the narrative?

And while Apple has been very forthcoming about their numbers (when you're winning you love to tell everyone), Google has been less so.

I think what a lot of analysts are saying is that Apple and Google approach their app stores very differently. Take me for example, I don't use my credit card in the app store or market. I've been using the same $100 itunes gift card I got with my iPod 5G (~4 years ago). iTunes users treat apps like any other downloaded song (ie. "I heard this was good, I'll get it.") because they can. Google has no gift card alternative and this is killing app revenue. I don't break out a credit card for just any purchase and I feel I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

The allegation was that a skew occurred based on the timetable of a full-steam advertised marketplace vs. a growing, unadvertised marketplace. The narrative in this case is not something which supports the reader, whether or not it supports android or iOS is (in my opinion) irrelevant.

I suspect that if you showed current, monthly snapshots of revenue, it would still show iOS as the clear winner. I don't think that is what would change.

What would change is that the reader would get an accurate, modern, current-day view of what is going on, as opposed to a weighted value. This can make a huge difference.

What is impeding Google's marketplace vs. iOS is probably an entirely new topic. There are a lot of good reasons, in addition to yours, absolutely. They could do better.

What I don't like to see around here is flagrant "fanboyism", this is in the form of making baseless assumptions that remain unchallenged because they're popular with the status quo. Often I find myself writing about apple/microsoft/google, for which I have no particular loyalty to any brand (I believe we should always choose what is best for ourselves and never buy into PR bullshit that each business is spinning to vie for our loyalty.)

My post ridicules the author for making a hopeful and completely unsourced argument, my exhaustive list (that you're implying as boiler plate, it's not) is a well thought out rationale for the many reasons why the app store is performing better.

In short: "na-ah" isn't a counterpoint.

iOS users, at least many of the early adopters, were used to spending money in the iTunes store on music. It was an easy leap for them to go from spending 99 cents for a song to 99 cents on an app. There are iTunes gift cards in almost every retail outlet so you don't even need a credit card.

Nobody's mentioning Windows Phone. I know it's a small market share, but with most owners being Microsoft techies and less competition, it could be a more profitable platform than Android.

He's assuming there aren't ad-supported iOS apps too…

Exactly. My guess (no data) is that if you lump in ad revenues and in-app sales, then iOS will maintain its lead.

I would go so far as to speculate that ads sold on iOS might convert better, since iPhone users are already spending more money on the platform.

For what it's worth, for me the Android revenue is 1000% the iOS revenues (for the exact same game). There's less competition on Android, and I suspect users are more into hardcore games.

( http://itunes.apple.com/app/pewpew/id370379981?mt=8 )

The context of the two platforms is very telling.

You buy an iPhone in a crystal palace.

You buy an Android phone from a "Wireless Store" between a bodega and a paycheck loan store.

The technology is democratized, but the audience varies.

Seriously? An article with no stats?

I'd say it's even lower than 7%, both for paid and ad supported apps, at least on my experience of having several applications for both iOS and Android. There is a small percentage of Android users willing to pay for apps, primarily due to Google not requiring a payment method when setting up your account and lots of Android users who don't use the smartphone features. This, in turn, makes the CPM lower in ad supported apps, since the ads have smaller returns and thus the advertisers pay less for them (compared to iOS).

Just to prove my point, here are yesterday's profits for a couple of apps:

- Paid app:

    - iOS: $128
    - Android: $6

- Ad supported app:

    - iOS: $1285
    - Android: $21

And that's without taking into account that Apple does most of the tax collection/invoicing for me while Google does not, despite taking the same sales percentage.

which apps are that? Thanks for sharing.

Sorry, I'd prefer to not disclose that.

Gasofa, buzzie, iRae

Ok, fair, but that is some really anecdotal evidence. Also, the amounts are low enough that you could even dismiss the evidence as having too low of a sample size.

This may hold true to your own personal experience, but it doesn't really have anything to do with getting a sense whether the income generated from Android devices is 5% or 10%.

You might be doing a terrible job at marketing to Android users, or have the wrong business model etc. (I'm not saying you are, I'm just saying we don't have any evidence from your information.)

I don't think anybody's trying to make the argument that in general Android produces more revenue. Only that it might not be as low as 7%, but possibly around 10% ?

Also, the article is criticizing the data the stats are based off, not trying to make an argument for the numbers being any different in real life.

I'm not saying you are wrong (of course you know your numbers better than anybody), I'm just saying that argument is completely irrelevant to the conversation.

Nice job, though, on the revenues. Your app(s) seem to be doing well :)

I'm not a specialist in that field, but my marketing efforts have been basically the same for both platforms. Of course, I might have targeted the wrong users in Android while targeting the right users on iOS, but I think that's unlikely to be case.

Maybe I didn't make that clear in my previous post, but while the data I posted is only about two apps, the percentage is consistent across all our apps (mine and my brother's) and some of my friends who develop for both platforms. That's still anecdotal data, but I wasn't claiming it was significative, just my experience.

P.S: Not trying to sound rude nor defensive, English is not my first language

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