“The biggest mobile developer study in history with 6,000 respondents from 115 countries says that while iOS developers make an average of $5,200 per month in app revenue and Android developers pull in $4,700, more developers plan to start developing for Windows Phone than any other platform. […] That’s aided, of course, by the fact that 71 percent of mobile developers are already developing for Android, and 56 percent are already developing for iOS.” I’m surprised there’s so little difference between income for iOS and Android developers. Reading the web, it often seems as if all iOS developers are millionaires and Android developers are poor unwashed peasants. Reality is, clearly, different.
… Jolla, Tizen, Firefox OS, Ubuntu Phone?
They don’t even chart, yet hilariously can do no wrong on this website.
You must forget this is OSnews. WP gets the coverage on here that it does because of the position of Windows, if that didn’t exist it would unlikely get much more attention than FirefoxOS.
UbuntuEdge, ftw! 🙂
Since none of these devices are yet shipping (I think?), it’s a little premature to be expecting large investments in apps. That follows success, which means they will need a compelling reason for a shopper to buy them independent of the app catalogue.
Anyone else go to read the report and see the prices?
£1,595 £1,895 £5,895
Yikes, isn’t that kind of steep for a report?
http://www.developereconomics.com/downloads/developer-segmentation-…
I was trying to find out if the developer incomes were available as medians instead of averages, since usually the breadwinners at the top take nearly the whole cake, leaving significantly less take-home for the rest.
Edited 2013-07-19 13:46 UTC
Nah, typical prices for enterprise papers like Gartner Group kind of thing and similar.
It’s available for free, it says so right in the article, with a link.
http://www.developereconomics.com/reports/q3-2013/
Am I missing something?
My mistake, I clicked on a link which must have been for a similar report.
To answer my earlier question, no they don’t give the median or standard distribution figures.
Can we finally stop hearing about how iOS apps make so much more money and Android users are all so cheap? There is enough money to justify making apps for both Android and iOS right away instead of making a half-assed port for Android 6 months late.
I’m not convinced that is true.
The Android market may be large but the iPhone seems to have captured a lot of gamers that would otherwise buy PSP or Gameboy games. I suspect for certain genres like RPGs it only makes sense to port to Android if the game ends up being a big enough hit on the iPhone to where the profits can cover the expense.
I’ve been wondering about this. Where are all these Android apps that people seem to want to pay for? I can’t seem to find them.
I’ve been using a Nexus 7 for little over a year now, and I’ve a total of 6 paid apps in my app drawer – TuneIn Radio Pro (which I hardly use), Tablified Market HD (which is utterly useless), Press (a decent feed reader), Komik (bought paid version to get rid of ads), Pocket Casts (very good, I must admit) and xScope Browser Pro (cos Chrome sucks balls) – in total. Checking the “All” list in the My Apps section of the Play Store reveals 3 more apps I paid for, all of which were rendered obsolete by Google Now’s functionality.
Compare that to my iPhone, which has at least 2 full pages of paid apps installed alone – that’s 20 apps per page on an iPhone5 screen, almost all of which I use with some regularity – and probably a dozen more if I check my App Store purchase history.
No paid games installed on either device, btw, though I have a couple or free ones that supposedly require in-app purchases to get extra stuff or whatever.
So where are all these awesome Android apps? They sure don’t seem to be abundantly available for the Nexus 7, which I always assumed was a mildly popular device. Are most of the popular money-making Android apps limited to games?
I guess it would be interesting to know which apps you paid for on the iPhone. I’d be curious to know the reasons why you didn’t pay for similar software on your Nexus (e.g. unavailability, functionality not needed, etc.).
Off the top of my head cos my phone’s charging in the bedroom and I’m lazy to walk all the way there,…
Around 5 are camera apps, so I’ll make an exemption since the Nexus 7 has no rear camera anyway, but I last I checked, none of them were available for Android either. I would’ve killed for something like Camera Noir or Instant back when I had the Galaxy Nexus.
A couple of typography apps, one of which is called Crispy – it adds typography to images/photos – and is great for on-the-fly composition, prelim ideas and stuff. Useful since I work in an ad/design agency.
A few more image enhancement apps, Mextures being my current fave. Not essential, but fun and somewhat useful. I’ve used a couple of the edited images for my company’s Pinterest and Facebook pages, as a matter of fact. The closest I’ve seen available on Android with regards to results is Autodesk’s Pixlr Express (also available on iOS) but that one doesn’t have a couple of nice features that Mextures provides.
A very cool app called Isometric which I bought just last week, which creates geometric artwork and optical illusion-esque images. Great for idea generation, and I’ve already used some of the generated images as bedrock for actual design jobs with Illustrator. Also used random generated images to replace all the photos for people on my contact list, cos people aren’t usually photogenic… lol.
About a dozen music-making/editing/sampling apps, almost all unavailable on Android – I really did bother searching since I though some would just be more useable on the Nexus 7’s larger screen, but no luck – due to everlasting audio latency issues. Some just fun electronica apps from Propellerhead and Native Instruments for playing around, but some of those from Korg and Roland are quite useful for idea generation (music for ads and stuff, even though that’s not my department), while some have become almost essential for jamming/chilling at home on the guitar, like the Tunable, Jamn and Groove Metronome. There are a couple of alternatives to the tuner app (Tunable) in Android, but none are as good as the ones for iOS.
I’ll admit that I have paid for about a dozen apps that are simply alternatives to stock iOS apps, like Fantastical or Mail or that cool gesture based alarm clock app, and I’m also willing to admit that Google Now on the Nexus 7 would do an equally good job for a few of those needs, but the fact remains that these apps were nice/polished enough to make me want to pay for them on iOS, an urge I don’t seem to get when browsing the Play Store or Android websites. I suppose half the problem lies with me, in that I tend to ignore Android apps that aren’t Holo, simply because the overall look and feel of current Android almost forces you to adopt a Holo-looking “app lifestyle”, for lack of better term, but that’s also the dev’s fault for not updating their apps. iOS 7 isn’t even out yet and you already have devs rushing to update their apps, while Android has had the Holo-look since ICS and some key apps are still stuck in pseud-Holo (meaning only Holo in appearance, not in use) or Gingerbread land.
I’ve could go on, really. There’s still more than a page full of iOS paid apps I haven’t talked about, but I think you get my gist, and I’ve bored you enough as it is already.
Obviously a subjective thing, I realize. An Android modder would argue that he/she gets all the cool homescreen and launcher apps like Apex and Nova, but how many of those can a single user justify paying for?
So to answer your question, or just TL;DR if you’ve just glanced through my long dreary post; It’s a combination of the 3 points you mention – unavailable, functionality, not needed – plus a few more like level of polish, Android version not as good, aesthetics & cool/fun-factor.
Jeez that was long. I seem to have too much free time today. :/ … Sorry
Edited 2013-07-19 20:20 UTC
Hey, absolutely no need to apologise. That made interesting reading and I’m glad you took the time to go into detail!
It sounds like there are some really valid areas (design and audio) where Android is less impressive than iOS. I’m sure there are others who find the opposite for some alternative area, but I’m afraid I’m not qualified to judge.
However it does also seem like enthusiasm plays an important part. Personally I’m still searching for really innovative and unexpected Apps on either Android or iOS, but I should probably search a bit harder! Your post has inspired me to take another look.
No. The data says iOS is still a lot more profitable. I don’t see how this survey fits in to the actual data, but then again it is just self-reports which aren’t very reliable.
Top iOS apps earn 4.6x more than Android, but Google Play is gaining ground
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/31/top-ios-apps-earn-46x-mor…
and http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/07/18/iphone-users-pay-average-…
To me, ad-supported apps are a curse. I gladly pay a dollar to have an app without apps. Heck I’d pay 2 or 3 or in some cases up to 5 if the app is good enough just to get rid of ads. Unfortunately on Android sometimes that isn’t even an option. For example: The official Scrabble app exists as a free with ads and a paid version without ads on iOS. On android it’s only the free version, which is so crammed with ads it’s completely unplayable.
I think the ad supported model is being phased out in favor of the freemium in app purchasing model, which I think is probably even worse from a customer point of view.
Ads have just been done terribly wrong on every mobile OS and is in need of a disruption. Truly good ads don’t feel like ads at all.
A possible explaination could be that an iOS app per installed device device is 4.6x more profitable than the equivalent Android device. As there are much more Android devices in the nature, the overall earn per released app is much closer.
1 iOS app = 4$ per device is installed on 1000 devices = 4000$
1 Android app =0.75$ per device is installed on 5000 devices = 3750$
It’s still less, but the overall revenue is very close
I have been saying this for a while – most of the revenues are taken by a small number of high stake developers.
But the average developer is in a different boat. That is where you have the small differences. Large developers tend to make more on iOS, thus in aggregate iOS pulls in more $$$.
Its the same case when saying that MacOSX developers make less than Windows developers… The pie is bigger for Windows, but it’s sliced up in a very different way.
I agree. It points to a huge discoverability problem, even on the iOS App Store. Small time devs are crowded out by big established shops.
We need more intelligent ranking, and I think Google is probably in the best position to build one. I’m not sure if they have (been a while since I browsed Play Store) but I wouldn’t be surprised if they do something awesome soon in that department.
This study still cannot explain the enormous difference in web-use statistics between the various platforms. The fact remains that iOS users actually USE the apps, data functions and internet functions of their smartphones far more than other platforms. Android users may buy close to the same amount of apps but they end up not using those apps as much for some reason. The question arises as to how usability factors into it. Or what are the other factors that contribute to the difference in use among the platforms.
Not anymore. Samsung recently overtook Apple in web statistics – just Samsung, so it doesn’t even count the rest of Android.
Here’s my sweeping generalizations about US smartphone users and apps:
1- People don’t trust “Android” like they trust Apple with the CC. Almost everyone I know with an Android keeps their credit card number away from it. Everyone I know with an iPhone is all hooked up in the app store and buys apps and media regularly. There are lots of 3rd parties and confusing names on Android – apple is the only party you deal with to get apps and media on your iphone, and they are most definitely trusted.
2- Android’s return rate, whether from defect or just unhappy customers, is far higher than the iPhone return rate. iPhone users get a new phone, at most, once every 16 months to 2 years. Many ride their iphone to obsolescence – we have a 3GS on it’s last legs after 4 years, and a 4 going on 3 years old working perfectly. Or they turn off the radio, reset, and give to a kid to be an iTouch (which can still load new apps). Most android people I know have a new phone/tablet thing every couple of months. It’s always bigger and “better” than the last one, and almost always gets upgraded again within a year, and from my observations they practically start from scratch with each phone. Maybe they keep contacts but not much else. Android people seem to say things like “that was on my old phone”. Apple just keeps moving all your data and apps with you, and a total migration can take under 30 minutes. I have purchased apps that I’ve been using since I bought them 3 iphones ago. I know I can buy a new iPhone today and be using it with my full apps and data within an hour, no headaches. This leads to more purchases since I trust the longevity and stability of the platform. The turnover and churn on Android leaves users on shifting sands, something most people won’t invest in.
3- Apple keeps the OS stock and minimal, pushing users to apps in order to “build out” their mobile experience. Android can have so many skins, widgets, launchers and hacks installed (and many do by default) that apps seem secondary to me. Apple gives you the minimal & consistent OS along with a few basic, solid apps to get you started, which leads you nicely into the app store to get the rest of the icons you see and covet on other iphones. I also believe that google doesn’t really believe in apps, they push and profit from web apps.
4- “It just works” on Apple. This is an old chestnut from the 90’s, when windows was “plug and pray”, but it’s still holds true in the mobile space. There are several things that Apple devices won’t do, and I suppose there are a few odd things that Apple devices can’t do, but there’s not much an Apple device will fail to do. If it’s advertised it can do it, no vaporware or ridiculous marketing claims with apple. They just show what the product actually does and it sells. The one you buy and take home does the same thing as the one in the commercial. Android device marketing is patently ridiculous most of the time – Lasers! Superpowers! 3D projection! Sex!!!! Must be disappointing to find out the phone is just another piece of plastic you will probably replace in 8 months.
These four points lead to Apple’s app ecosystem being far more healthy, the apps being higher quality, and the users being more willing to continually purchase. I can believe that the average iPhone owner spends $5-$30 per month on apps and media, on top of their phone bill, and generally stays pretty happy due to the reliability of the platform.