“Overall we estimate that $6,000,000 has been paid out to developers for games, and $15,000,000 has been paid out on apps,” Watkinson reports. “That is a total of $21,000,000, almost 50x lower than the amount paid out to devs on iPhone.”
Watkinson reports, “This really indicates how much of a cottage industry the paid Android Market remains, with insufficient sales numbers to warrant full-time labor for paid content.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Devs, do you want to waste your time making apps that don’t sell for a derivative U.S.-centric platform (at least until iPhone adds U.S. carriers) or do you want to make real money creating and selling apps for a real, proven, worldwide platform? Your choice.
Actually, a much better statistics would be to take the total revenue divided by the number of developers – that would provide a much better picture of how much developers are making.
@Reader
Spot on. It’s so easy to manipulate numbers to get them to show what you want them to, and 99% of people are none the wiser.
The android market is also growing, so a developer with the goal of making money should not limit himself to one platform if he has the available time and resources to do both.
i think the median revenue per developer, factoring in how long it took to develop the app and how long it has been in the store, divided by the number of people owning equipment that can use the app and accounting for leap year would be a better statistic.
on the other hand, the fact that the app store is a BILLION DOLLAR A YEAR business for developers collectively is a good statistic. there are a lot of pretty big companies that don’t make that much money in a year.
The total revenue is a fair metric, since the Android pundits try to make it sound like the two stores are of equal magnitude.
2% marketshare. Nice.
Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s not marketshare. Its just an embarassing statement about
a) how bad the android market is
b) the discretionary income of android owners
let’s call a spade a spade… there are some people out there who thing everything, tv shows, movies, software, should be FREE. They love the word open and they want to rip everything off. those people bash iPhones and Apple products and cheer on the Android.
You know what else they do? Ignore Google Ads, if not install Ad block software.
The Android Free + Ads strategy may not be working out.
Remember how MS tried to turn everything into a windows license? disaster that gave us Windows Mobile.
For Google its… turn everything into a webpage with ads, whether it makes sense for the customer or not!
Coming from someone who had to make a few “apps” and “websites” for those horrendous phones during the pre-iPhone era, developing for Android is similar. It’s better, but all over the place. It’s so much harder (and much less rewarding) than developing for the iPhone. Xcode rules and will only get nearly infinitely better with the version 4 release which will attract even more developers.
It’s truly no comparison no matter how you want split hairs. Android is selling and its developers are still not making the money of their iPhone brethren.
Even if the developer count was 1 for each platform, 1 developer got $1 billion and the other developer got $6 million. Now, you’re fresh with ideas and ready to choose where to spend your time developing. I believe 9 out of 10 times that person will choose the billion dollar platform.
It boils down to who is making the most money. Period.
@Reader…
That’s not the goal though. In your ‘divide’ metric, you’re rewarding Android for being small, and punishing Apple for being such an attractive platform for developers.
There’s a lot of failed movie scripts out there too, but I think Hollywood likes to think they’re taking the best scripts and making the most bankable movies. You think because 500 million scripts never see the light of day, Hollywood is a failure?
Bzzzt. Try again.
I am getting to point that I don’t care about the Android/iPhone “competition”. One person drives a Miata and another drives a Solstice or Sky – oh wait, so sorry neither of those latter two are made anymore! Well, see my point.
@ Reader,
Most Android developers make free Apps. That’s the Android developer’s biggest challenge. How do you compete with free?
Wow. 99% of us are not as smart and savvy as YOU? Be careful, OngoBongo: Your hubris is showing.
Google and its Droid developers have no interest in earning profits by selling end users anything. It won’t be too long and the phones will be completely free.
Profits will be “earned” by sucking every bit of data that can be pulled from the consumer, with or without his/her knowledge. That’s the business model upon which Google and all “social networking” scams are operating.
Word to the wise: “cloud” = hacker/scammer/marketer paradise
Could be interesting to see how much on average does a iPhone developer and how much does an Android developer does. I have heard a lot of success histories from iPhone developers but none from Android.
This is my own <strike>guess</strike> analysis of the Android developer community. Their primary motivation behind getting the SDK and learning to use it is two-fold:
1. Their anti-Apple stand in principle (walled-garden, iron-fist control);
2. Land rush period of rapid Android growth.
The first is an obvious one for many. The second, though, is somewhat misguided, and is quickly losing steam. Being the first to market, even if the market is rather small, can have some initial advantages, allowing you to establish yourself in it. However, a mobile app market is fairly democratic, and everyone looks the same, whether the app is developed by Adobe, or by a single developer working out of a basement. Early position does NOT guarantee anything.
In the end, it just comes down to where you stand a better chance of making more money. And no matter how you look at the numbers, iOS platform offers significantly better opportunities than the Android, with relatively much less effort.
I don’t know. I guess THIS DOES makes sense on a Mac-centered website, you know, defending Apple, even in the light of new Android phones, that is fair on this site but….saying Android phones will “be free”, which is ridiculous, and saying that Android phones have no success with their apps or A.M (Android Market), and that most developers only care about iOS and Apple? Shame on those who feel that Android is just another worthless OS. Sorry, but the competition must go on and so does the show. Apple can’t ‘can’ it for the rest of us who didn’t want an iPhone.
I take all that back, if I may. Come to think of it, I admit: Apple does shine when it comes to making cool looking/working iPhones and giving the Apple fans a run for their money! Since their phones are great, why would I, someone who actually loves their OS (Mac OS X 10.6+) and the look of their computer line, throw lemons at them like in the previous post I made? Just forget all that.
Tom A.