iPhone App Store Beats Android Market 250:1

Matt Hall on his Larva Labs blog laments lousy sales on Android Market, both for his apps and those by other companies. For one application, the iPhone App Store is outselling Android Market 250:1, while (as a commenter notes) the iPhone installed base advantage is only 15:1.

The conclusions are based on AdMob data, which notes that iPhone/iPodTouch owners are 2x as likely to buy paid apps as Android users. (That would only suggest a 30x discrepancy between the two platforms.)

Hall laments several aspects of the Android Market shopping experience. It’s not clear whether these decisions are just implementation errors that are easily fixed, or systematic choices, perhaps (as Hall suggests) reflecting a bias towards free apps.

The latter point I don‘t quite follow: Google (GOOG) is making money off of Android (through increased use of its ad-supported online services), so what’s wrong with the software developers making money? Google has already so commoditized mobile phone software — and Apple (AAPL) has established a standard $1 price point for most paid apps — that smartphone app developers already face a considerable challenge in monetizing their creative efforts. Why force a zero price rather than a near-zero price?

Comments

[Zoltan L. K...:]

It seems it all boils down to the way of financing (ads vs paying) those software stores and not about openness. This determines pricing which itself has huge side effects, like commoditization and likely impacts on quality later on.

Sep 01 04:56 AM

[bobchr:]

Apple has not forced a $1 price point, prices on the IPhone/ Ipod touch market place are market price driven. I wish authors would stop confusing the price of music with the price of apps. Just because they share the ITunes ecosystem is no excuse for this shoddy piece of reporting. The app maker sets the asking price of apps on ITunes, the market place determines price elasticity.

Sep 01 07:15 AM

[reverie:]

I'm still not so sure if there are already 3 million Android users out there (as suggested by the 15:1 ratio). There have been few official statements on phone shipments and sell-through from Android phone suppliers. 3 million shipped I might believe, the sell-through figure however must be considerably smaller, given that over the last 6 months 3 Android phones were launched (HTC G2, HTC Hero, Samsung Galaxy) and each will need to fill the retail channel with a few 100k of phones. As a point of comparison: At any given time, Apple has between 1.5 and 2 million iPhones in the channel.

Sep 01 12:39 PM