Distimo recently published a report saying there was no honest money in Android.
Highlights:
- 80% of all paid apps have been downloaded less than 100 times until now.
- There are only 5 Android games that cost money and have reached 250,000 downloads. The App Store has ten in the U.S over the past two months alone!
Yes, I’m being a little melodramatic here but advertising is such a bad experience on mobile, it’s a point I feel very strongly about. When you see apps like angry Birds being paid on iOS and advertising-supported on Android, it makes me feel very uncomfortable regarding the money-making potential on the platform.
Doesn’t it depend on the product? If your content delivery is what you’re trying to sell (and not additional services) then you are really just trying to sell the bits that you’ve crafted over many months. And when you can’t sell them, are you seriously supposed to survive on the pennies gleaned from producing a polluted application experience?
Over at MobileOrchard they have a different report.
“During the LeWeb conference in Paris Eric Schmidt (Google Chairman) commented that he believes developers will abandon iOS for Android in less than 6 months”
The reason for this shift will be the “high volume of Android shipments”. There’s no doubt that this will favour Google and they are motivated to make it easy for developers to sell advertising but they don’t have the same motivation to help developers make money directly off consumers.
It’s plain to me that Android has replaced Symbian in the market. There have been a plethora of app stores for Symbian over the years and still, bugger all money came out of them.
How do you reconcile releasing a polluted (advertising supported) product for free on Android and a premium paid product on iOS?
Is your link to the right report? The one I got gave an overview of the Windows 7 market.
Also, I’m skeptical of any report’s accuracy around Android at the moment, given the recent release of the Kindle Fire. Having said that, I’m actually not sure it should be treated like an Android device – you can only buy apps on the Amazon app store for it, and they only allow games/apps that actually work well for the Fire’s form factor, so it’s more like its own category …
I updated the link but I think the data is in there – because obviously they’ll be comparing Win7 to Android and iOS.
I’m not sceptical of the report at all considering two things.
Obviously the report is based on data – not analyst supposition. It’s my supposition/opinion that Kindle will quickly become the #2 tablet in both market share and also app share. I just feel it in my bones.