Apple blowing away Android with up to 90% of app revenue
Apple’s market share may be slipping, but its share of app revenue is huge and not looking like it will slide anytime soon, according to Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster (via Fortune). According to public data from Apple, and AndroLib, which tracks Android Market information, Munster figures Apple owns about 85 to 90 percent of current mobile app spending. While he’s measuring lifetime revenue, which provides Apple with an advantage, the discrepancy is larger than be explained by the App Store’s head start alone.
With numbers like that, iOS device owners have nothing to fear when it comes to the possibility of developers fleeing en masse to Android as it becomes the world’s dominant mobile operating system. And it looks like Apple will retain that crown for a long time, too, even if trends continue to favor Android: Munster suggests Apple will keep more than 70 percent of mobile app revenue share for the next three or four years.
Why? Android apps just don’t make anywhere near as much money through Google’s Market, nor are they downloaded as often. By Munster’s calculations, the Android Market has around 6,750,000,000 downloads to date, compared to Apple’s 18,566,331,811. Those have resulted in respective gross revenues of $341,765,335 and $4,939,611,127 respectively. Of the gross revenue, developers have seen $239,235,734 from the Market, while $3,457,727,789 has been paid out to those making software for iOS. Percentage-wise, paid apps account for only 1.3 percent of Android apps, vs 13.5 percent for iOS.
The difference is striking, and will mean Apple’s platform is likely to continue to hold a strong lead over Google’s when it comes to the breadth and depth of software selection. It also means Apple isn’t likely to freak out if Google moves a few more devices per year than it does; a strong ecosystem should keep customers coming back in strong enough numbers to keep iOS device and software revenue extremely high despite dwindling market share.
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Too bad iOS is a load of crap compared to Android now.
What’s the difference in ad revenue? That’s Google’s endgame, not app revenue.
According to Google, 2/3 of their mobile ad revenue derives from iOS and Symbian, Android, WinMo and WP7 take the other 1/3.
Nice way to tilt the statistics in Apple’s favor listing “lifetime” revenue.
Watch what say and try not to piss off the Android Pep Squad. They are seething balls of hate today because of massive amounts of malware in their fav platform, the just released Galaxy Nexus volume issues, and now this. I would watch my back.
I am not a developer. So if the app is free on my android and 2 bucks on my wife’s iphone. Who is winning…same app…i get it for free she pays….apple and developers are winning but user is actually losing. But i guess some people need to pay their tithe to their church.
I agree. Most usefull apps in Android are free and their equivalent in iOS are not. Both platforms are great anyway and I think that the more they compete the better for the end users.
What is funny is Ad Rev seems to be neglected. That is what is really making money. This one time 2 bucks on ios where as they might get payed 5 cents PPM really adds up quick and is sustainable rev. Android is destroying ioS
LOL, I can assure you that ads pay nothing copared to paid/freemium apps.
Last time I checked, Google’s entire business made LESS than iPhone 4, in fiscal year 2011! That means Google/Android is NOT doing better than iOS, considering Google refuses to release Android’s sales figures or device sell-through numbers. Also, Apple actually makes more in ads too. Plus, Google pays Apple $1.4B/year for YouTube, Google Maps, Google Search & GMail to be on iOS devices. Google still hasn’t figured out how to run a “long-term” business properly.
Using lifetime sales skews the results.
Not taking ad revenue into account from free apps with ads skews them even further.
Therefore using this study to come to any reasonable conclusion about the future state of iOS or Android ecosystems is frankly laughable.
More or less, same apps and games are available for both devices. One will be Free and other will be Paid. So what’s the big deal?
My buddy posted this elsewhere:
“Android: There are 6,750,000,000 downloads, of which 87,750,000 are paid (1.3%), generating $239,235,734 or $2.726 per app.
Apple: There are 18,566,331,811 downloads of which 3,457,727,789 are paid (13.5%) generating $2,506,454,794 or $1.380 per app.”
So it looks to me like if you can put together a nice app, you can actually get more per sale on Android vs iPhone.
As others pointed out, apps with ads will generate lifetime revenues while a $2 app will generate $2, period.
i think snappii.com apps are worth mentioning.The service is very flexible and useful even for those who are not experienced programmers.
Android market is a copy paste from iTunes. Proud ? Oh yeah android users proud about that. Download all ur free apps now from android market, and soon android market will become fully paid apps and nothing free anymore coz developers are suffered… Dont forget the shared revenue from google to developers, developers said they hate android !