Android Market and App Store: Profit and downloads
According to the estimates of the analytical company Piper Jaffray, 90% of all money spent on applications for mobile devices is accounted for by Apple’s iOS; the Android Market has earned only 7% of the money collected in the App Store over the entire period of its existence. This directly affects the income of developers.
“Google has narrowed the gap this year, and we are confident that its share in the smartphone market will grow faster than Apple’s share, but, nevertheless, in the next 3-4 years, Apple will own at least 70% of the profits from mobile applications,” commented Gene Munster, analyst at Piper Jaffray.
The amount of profit is also determined by the fact that now there are only 1.3% of paid applications on the Android Market. Thus, out of 6.75 billion downloads, only about 90 million were paid applications. For comparison, at the end of September, Apple’s gross revenue from the App Store App Store amounted to $ 4.9 billion, with 14% of all downloads coming from paid applications.
Interestingly, if you look at the average cost of apps, it will be higher in the Android Market: $3.79 versus $2.01 in the App Store (the average cost is calculated based on prices in the top 50 paid apps). This suggests that Android users pay more for individual apps, but download them much less.
Based on the latest figures on the number of activated Android devices, Gene Munster concluded that, on average, 34 applications are installed on each device. On iOS devices, this number is 71.
The amounts paid to developers were also calculated: about $3.46 billion has already been paid by Apple and only $239 million by Google.
In June of this year, Piper Jaffray conducted a small survey of developers, the results of which showed that 47% of respondents create applications for both iOS and Android. But everyone agreed that iOS is a platform for which it is easier to develop applications and monetize them.
According to analysts’ forecasts, in 2012 the gross revenue from applications on mobile platforms will amount to $ 14 billion. And, despite the fact that the number of downloads of Android applications will exceed the number of downloads from the App Store, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch will be able to earn $2.86 billion from the sale of applications by 2016, and revenue from applications for Android devices will be equal to $ 1.5 billion.
