
Android Market to overtake App Store in August 2011  - EricssonLabs
http://www.mobilebusinessbriefing.com/apps/article/android-to-overtake-app-store-in-august-2011
======
flyosity
As an iPhone developer, I just don't really care anymore about the size of one
app store versus another.  It's all about which store you can make real money
from.  Apple has paid out over $2 billion to developers (data from March 2011)
and what has Google paid to Android developers?  $50M?  $100M?  A tiny percentage
compared to Apple. 

There are so many blog entries at the top of HN about Android developers who
made $500/mo from their apps.  Guess what?  $500/mo is nothing.  $500/mo doesn't
even pay for rent.  If you write an iPhone app that doesn't look like Interface
Builder exploded and you don't make at least $500/mo then you're pretty much a
miserable failure.  I have friends that have built the simplest, most inane
iPhone games on a Sunday afternoon that make over $1000/mo. 

The successes of iPhone developers absolutely dwarf the articles I've read
about Android developers' incomes.  I'm not talking about big game development
houses either, I'm referring to 1-3 person teams (designer, coder, coder
typically) who make tens of thousands of dollars per month.  I'm personally
friends with at least a dozen people who have apps that make this much.  It's
not even a surprise anymore when a nice-looking iPhone app makes $50k in its
first month. 

The reality is that iPhone developers who make decent apps make a lot of
money.  I don't care if the Android Market is 5x the size of the App Store if
Apple is still paying out billions of dollars to developers. 

~~~
tomjen3
Google only recently made it possible to do in app selling, which I believe
will actually make it much, much easier to get money for our games, especially
as android users are more willing to buy in game upgrades. 

But that is only half the equation the other part being that users can expect
to find an app that can solve their problem - which is important for the users
to buy an Android phone in the first place (it is also partly why I have
written of Win7 phone). 

~~~
flyosity
A large issue of the revenue difference is that you can return apps for up to
24 hours on Android but you can't return an iPhone app.  Because of this,
friends of mine who use Android phones will routinely download an app to use
for a specific situation they're currently in, then return later the following
day.  It's not the app is bad, it's just that they used it for the one thing
they wanted to use it for, and can now just get their money back.  It's like
buying a tux for your wedding and then returning it the next day for a full
refund.  This may be a huge plus for users, but as a developer it really,
really sucks. 

~~~
orangecat
The refund window was reduced to 15 minutes a while back.  Which IMO as an
Android developer is too short; 1 or 2 hours would be better. 

~~~
dpcan
As a successful android dev, I want the window gone.  If they want to email me
for a refund, fine, I'll refund with no questions asked, but letting people
play my paid apps while they wait for the doctor to call them in and just
getting a refund sucks. 

~~~
joebadmo
Don't you think those people are cheap enough that they're probably not going
to download your app at all if they can't refund it?  Isn't that little bit of
exposure better than nothing?  Maybe if they end up really liking your app,
they'll keep it.  Can you know how many people who keep your app tried it in
the first place because of the refund window? 

I can understand your frustration from seeing a lot of refunded apps, but as a
user, it can be frustrating to have to pay for every app that I try, without
being able to really see if it's up to my standards or solves my problem. 
Which is why I much preferred the 24 hour window, esp.  for apps that you can't
really test drive well in 15 minutes. 

------
edw
Does anyone buy this analysis?  No, not the idea that someday there may be more
apps in Google's app store than Apple's, but the drawing straight line
projections and marking a circle around the intersection and looking at the
date axis and saying "OK, that's the day!" 

Shouldn't there maybe be an obligation to think about the data you're
analyzing.  Like, maybe some of those Android apps represent apps that were
available for iOS?  Maybe the "researchers" should look into the percentage of
Android-only apps and iOS-only apps and try to see in which categories there
are growing or shrinking leads for one platform or another? 

This "finding" seems more like a typical attention-whoring move.  It's like, in
1998, posting a poll asking whether Sun or Microsoft or Yahoo was going to buy
Apple.  It's designed to gin up outrage and therefore attention.  Don't feed the
troll. 

~~~
watty
It's not scientific but I still think it has value.  Two different firms have
forecasted a month that they believe the Android app store will overtake the
Apple app store in numbers.  This metric has value and it's what research firms
are paid to do. 

~~~
edw
What is the value of the metric?  And what metric?  App submissions per unit
time?  I suppose that metric has _some_ value.  The projected date that the
Google app store will have more apps than Apple's iOS app store is not a
metric: it's a naive extrapolation. 

What value do research firms deliver?  For whom?  In the past, many people have
accused various research firms of shilling for various industry players, e.g.
Gartner for Microsoft.  I've never heard of a research firm providing
insightful, actionable, accurate, non-trivial analysis. (" Sun will rise
tomorrow!")  The only people who I know of who cite research firms' reports are
people in large corporations who are out of touch with reality or sales people
or people at companies that have an interest in having others believe what a
research firm is saying. 

Market research can be scientific in that it can reflect a basic intellectual
honesty and be the result of critical reflecting on findings and asking
whether they make even the least amount of sense. 

When people use the term "scientific" the way you did, it often appears to be
a defensive move, a way to say, "Of course this isn't a repeatable double-
blind controlled clinical trial!"  But there's much more to science than that. 
Most of what we know we know through the application of scientific methods
(perhaps better-called habits of mind) in situations where gold-plated studies
are impractical or impossible. 

\---

ADDENDUM

I am being harsh because research firms contribute little or no value.  They're
little better than web content farms in terms of the volume and value of
information they produce.  They feed pointless speculation.  They flatten
complex issues into simple-minded horse races.  I am far more supportive of
people doing real work that turns out to be spectacularly wrong.  Research
firms produce thick, black, sooty smoke that pollutes the marketplace, both
the literal marketplace and the marketplace of ideas. 

~~~
watty
"attention-whoring", "troll", "naive", etc.  Why are you getting so offensive
about this article? 

I agree that this metric has little value.  Quality of apps, average sales per
app and exclusives are all more important.  However, this is still a metric
used by marketing and I believe some consumers do care about "the biggest app
store".  I think Apple has used app numbers in various commercials. 

This article doesn't conclude which app store is better (and actually says
smaller is better for sales).  It is simply stating that based on the current
trends, Android will have more apps. 

------
wallflower
Speaking as an iOS developer who has switched to Android (because of client
contract demand), Android lacks the Wow app.  The app like the visual AR
translation app (which despite its flaws).  Or The Elements iPad app. 

Android lacks exclusive, luxury-type apps.  It, for lack of a better phrase,
lacks snobs. 

Snobs mean more for a market and the developers that pursue them, than sheer
numbers. 

------
mikemaccana
What specifically in the Android Market will overtake the iOS App Store? 

\- The fake-licensed 'Spiderman' and Wolverine clone games with the same
graphics and massively slow Quake engine port?  The fake Rolex watch widgets? 
The fake Citizen watch widgets?  Various other 'same code, different graphics'
spamware apps? 

\- John's maze test?  Other games that lack actual scoring or gameplay, but are
more tech demos? 

\- The great games that have ads plastered all over their Android versions,
like Angry Birds, as the developers think users are cheap and don't bother
providing a paid version. 

Massive ghetto is massive.  That's not an achievement.