Man, I can't read this thread. There is so much hyperbole. I should have recognized the type of people this headline and article would bring out.
edit: I don't understand your claim. Your wording wasn't problematic. As I read it before and read it now, you're implying that moving to Android results in "little money to be made". That's the part that I don't really understand I guess.
My understanding from every report I have ever read is that there just isn't a lot of money in Android apps. Not a lot of developers share, but those who do tend to report underwhelming results compared to what I see from iOS shops (and those who develop for both platforms have said exactly that in no uncertain terms). For example, Kreci posts his profits every month, and the monthly average is something like $1300 from 10 apps, several of which are pretty popular. All the news stories I see about the Android Market seem to agree with this. If you have better information, I would honestly be fascinated to hear.
(I don't mean to impugn Kreci's success. He's well within the range he wants to be in for where he lives and I'm nothing but happy for him — but for where I live, that's rent on a cheap apartment.)
I've put 50 apps into the Android market recently that are direct ports of iOS equivalents. Across the board they make about 40% of the iOS ones. So, it's not as good, but it's a complete myth that there's no money there. And it's still growing tremendously.
I think the perception of Android has been deeply colored by the early experience of developers when Android really was a niche geek market. However after 800% growth last year it just isn't that market any more - it's a market mainly full of real consumers who outnumber the geeks now. When a platform is growing as fast as Android pretty much any benchmark you read from even months ago is going to be misleading.
We have an app in the Android Market and the same type of app in the App Store. The Android app makes about $7500/month and the iOS app makes about $3000/month.
We're about to release another paid app in March on both platforms that will be give us more data about the performance of apps in each marketplace. Maybe I should write a blog post about it...
The Apple App store still makes by far the most money - $1.8 billion in revenues last year compared to $102 million for Android Market. Same for per app - an average of $5400 per year for the App store vs $850 for Android Market.
I originally qualified that a lot more, but it read awkwardly, so I shortened it and assumed people would know what I meant. I'm sorry if it bothers you that much. Is the new wording better?
Man, I can't read this thread. There is so much hyperbole. I should have recognized the type of people this headline and article would bring out.
edit: I don't understand your claim. Your wording wasn't problematic. As I read it before and read it now, you're implying that moving to Android results in "little money to be made". That's the part that I don't really understand I guess.