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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

This is another post that seems to have missed the point of the linked article. The last graph I saw estimated total revenue from iOS apps was about 2x that of total Play Store revenue (though to be fair, this undercounts Android a little as you can monetize apps via Amazon et. al. too). And of course Android is growing much faster.

The contention in the linked article is that by pushing your "startup" app (which they imply to be a high quality app in a novel category) into the Android ecosystem first you can take advantage of the generally poorer app quality to get a "bigger piece of the pie". (This is the same argument that was made for years about Mac game development, btw.)

I'm not quite sure I buy all of that, but arguing against is has to be a lot more subtle than asserting that Android users "don't pay for apps".

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The last graph I saw estimated total revenue from iOS apps was about 2x that of total Play Store revenue

If Google had sent that much to developers they'd be saying something. 90% of the data points we see are of the form:

My app made X on Android and 5-10X on iOS

I had to dig up a cite. This isn't the article that I remember looking at, but it's probably reporting the same number (specifically that iOS revenue is 2.3x that of Android): http://venturebeat.com/2013/07/31/android-in-app-downloads/

The reason those "data points" are skewed is psychology. No one is inspired to write a vitriolic blog post whining that their Android app only makes 73% as much as the iOS version. Nor is the iOS-centric HN echo chamber well equipped to give you a random sample of these things. And, frankly, lots of those bigger numbers are simply old. Android's market share is growing rapidly. Three years ago, I think 10x was probably correct.

2.3x is still very significant. Would you rather make 3k a month, or 6.9k a month? One of those is 36k a year. The other is 82.8k a year. I know which one I'd prefer.

Yet again, though, this is confusing revenue across the platform with revenue per app/developer/development-hour/etc... The contention in the linked article is that you can get a "bigger slice of the smaller pie" by being an early mover on Android. That may not be true, but you can't argue against it by shouting about the size of the pie as a whole.

The correct answer is to target both as 3.3 is significantly better than 2.3.

And 2.3 was 2.6 in January so for a really bad back of the envelope calculation we can guess 2.3 will be 1.0 sometime before 2017.

That could be true, but not necessarily. There is an opportunity cost to take into account. Is it better to port to the other platform, or just work on another app for the same platform?

I think there are lots of advantages and good reasons to target both, but as long as the majority of the revenue comes from iOS, it makes sense to target iOS first.

Also, lots can happen between now and 2017. 4 years ago nokia and blackberry were still competing. iOS or Android could in theory be small players in 4 years. (Note that I don't think that will be the case, but it's possible.)

One can tell that Apple have sent invites for a town hall event, the negative stories are ramping up.

> Nor is the iOS-centric HN echo chamber...

Read the comments here. The significant majority are pro-Android. The whole 'plucky little Android' schtick is extremely tiresome and frankly devalues your point. The "psychology" that you cite is basically confirmation bias, so beautifully illustrated by your comment.

Whilst Android is making gains is some markets, so Apple is in others. Apple is up before a hardware update in the UK, France and US, taking share away from Android.

My app made X on Android and 5-10X on iOS

Of the data points that in your circle you see, you mean? I've seen anecdotes recently of publishers making much more on the Android market. That's the thing about anecdotes.

The most recent stats are that they are closing very fast.

Where have you seen these anecdotes?

On here. There have been various front-pagers on here by people demonstrating better Android sales than iOS.

But it is incredibly variable. How are they marketed? Do they pander to the demographics? Do they take advantage of the platforms? Are they crowded segments on each platform? How does it compare to the incumbents in those segments? Etc. It is impossible to separate all of those, which is why such comparisons are usually bunk.

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