Two years ago the Play store yielded 1/10th the revenue of the App Store, by common metrics. One year ago it was 1/4. The most recent stat is 1/2 -- still months old. Do you see where this is going?
The #1 source of revenue for many games and other media on the App Store is via gifted iTunes cards. This is a mechanism that is only now finding its way to Android.
Yes, the Play Store revenue may be gaining on iTunes revenue. -- but per-app revenue in The Play Store has not necessarily grown. Revenue growth indicates nothing without the number of apps on each platform. Since the Play Store has more apps than iTunes, we cannot reliably correlate an increasing revenue (and a decreasing revenue differential) with increasing per-app revenue.
In fact, per-developer revenue represents more useful data than per-app revenue. Since the developer (firm or individual) pays the cost of residing on the platform, he also recoups the revenue. He can decide to reinvest revenue in more apps. Therefore we should not exclude developers with multiple apps from our model. So we use per-developer revenue instead of per-app revenue.
What is the per-developer revenue of The Play Store and iTunes?
The overwhelming majority of apps on both platforms are free. Among what I could charitably call "pay-worthy" apps, my personal impression is that there are probably a magnitude more on the iOS platform. Indeed, this submission seems to talk to that, pointing out that there is more of an opening for quality apps on Android.
I've never respected any number of apps metric because they are overwhelmingly chaff.
I know there are a lot of arguments AGAINST the play store, but this is quite real and imo quite valid.
Developers are motivated by per-DEVELOPER revenue...
not per-APP STORE revenue.
It's just crass selfishness... but there it is.
Are you being sarcastic?
It is also a bit comical that iTunes Connect is down today.
Sure: I see that, if I'm releasing an app this year, I should target iOS first because Android is a distant second.
(And can I say that I continue to hate the "puck" quote and, while it was a mildly clever over-generalization when Jobs used it, nowadays it seems mostly to be used as a kind of pompous way to say nothing useful whatsoever. Which is to say: In a few years everyone's going to be freakin' tired of that quote and so continuing whip it out is very "where the puck was.")
if I'm releasing an app this year, I should target iOS first because Android is a distant second
Personally I target both "first", because the tools and methods to do so are simple and effective. However if you are somehow making Absolutely Median Software, then sure. Reality tends to be dramatically more nuanced, and such a blanket statement is almost certainly naive nonsense.
Indeed, which is why I dislike the "puck" bromide, regardless of who popularized it.
I thought cross-platform development creates less quality apps.
Could you please share what tools and methods are you talking about?
It is not just a 50 USD card (or other similar values) that people buy and gift around? What this has to do with games?
I don't have any source for that, or even necessarily believe it (I don't disbelieve it either) ... I'm just pointing out what OP meant by that comment.
As a second effect, people don't think of things like iTunes cards as real money. Give someone $50 on an iTunes cards and, I suspect, it will see much less discretion than a $50 bill.
I was wondering about it...
Gift cards do not exist on my country, neither on my target markets, thus why I was kinda confused about it!