A couple of weeks ago, I answered a question about pricing difference on the iPhone and Android stores. But the real question that developers want answered is “Can I make enough money to justify the time and effort in creating an Android app?”

Of course, one of the best ways to make money from the Android Market is to win Google Android Developer Content. The price money of $100K can certainly cover the mandatory snack food required by programmers. But outside of this, is anyone making money on the store?

Judging by the stories of a few developers and companies, the answer is no,  or at least, not yet. The big reason cited is that thee are just a larger volume of customers on the iPhone. The other advantage that the iPhone has to Android is the iTunes desktop app that makes exploring the iPhone app store a relatively easy procedure. The Android Market is available only through the Android-powered phones with their small screen. One problem with this small screen market is that it really limits how apps are described to potential customers. On the iPhone, a full screen of text and photos are available for customers to preview. On the Android Market, app previews are limited to a small icon and 325 character long descriptions.

Other complaints about things like using Google Checkout to purchase apps seems a little weak. At this stage, I think it is a difference in the way the customers view app buying. On Android, there are many free apps of good quality. Why spend the money for premium apps? On the iPhone side, customers are so used to spending small amounts of money for apps that they pay for questionable apps simple because they are popular. For example, one app caled The Big Red Button is just a image of a big red button that plays a sound when it is pushed. Its function was clearly described in its preview, but still people purchased the app for $0.99 and were angry that they had bought this app at all.

Since Geogad has its Android-powered travel app on the Android Market and also hosts the Informal Android Developer Meetup, I am sometimes asked about the pricing difference between the Android Market and the iPhone Apps Store. Usually, this question comes from developers who are trying to decide between learning to program Android or iPhone first or from iPhone developers who are considering porting their iPhone apps to Android.

I really don’t have any direct knowledge of pricing on the various stores since all of Geogad’s apps are free and since Geogad makes its content available for free with ads over all of its various delivery channels.

However, I did spot this timely news article from fiercemobilecontent.com.  It quotes a report published by Distimo that says that apps are priced about the same on both stores. The article did point out two slight differences in the gaming category.

The most popular Android games typically cost between 99 cents and $5.95, with most selling for $2.99, while most App Store titles sell for 99 cents, with a few offered between $6.99 and $9.99.

…games remain the App Store’s best-selling category, with more titles in the premium Top 15 than in the free Top 15. Classic games are particularly popular in Android Market, where three out of the Top 15 are emulators. (The App Store does not approve emulators.)

A Japanese blogger who goes by Nobi shared his views on whether Apple’s iPhone is a success or not in Japan.  He was too polite to say so directly but comparing Apple’s marketing to George W. Bush’s policies sounds pretty negative.

Fierce Developer posted an interesting piece on another blog’s post. Specifically, a professional iPhone developer crunched the numbers on how much money was involved in putting together a really complex iPhone app and determined that it was completely unworkable with the $0.99 apps crowding out the expensive apps. With over 10,000 apps now, the store is already pretty crowded.

I look at this development as just another software cycle in the life of a new platform. After all, the apps are becoming more complicated because the software and interfaces are getting easier to program and to interface. At the same time the market is growing. These complex programs that require several manhours and $100,000 would have required several times the effort and money just a couple of years ago. They would have been almost impossible to get enough of a market to make the development worth the cost.

Even today in the life of the PC, free software is everywhere, but people still buy complex, expensive software when it is justified by the price and usefulness. After all, Oracle sells multimillion dollar databases even though there are many high quality free database easily available.

In a related story, the iPhone apps store was just about the only site that actively advertised that you could get iPhone apps at their store. Oh, sure. There were sites where jailbroken phones could get apps, but those don’t count. Now the monopoly has been shaken by Mobile Distillery, which is heavily promoting their site to developers. But will they come?

The mobile industry has never been so hot. Forst, Apple announces quietly that users have downloaded 300 million apps among the 10,000 apps available on the iPhone Apps store. Apple is also pushing the iPhone in new sales channels, specifically WalMart, which may be the only retailer on the planet to have increased sales during the downturn.

Their competitor, Google’s Android, is getting more allies in their fight. Sony Ericson will be building Android phones after initially refusing to join Google’s mobile push. Sony is still part of the community that will be working on Nokia’s Symbian platform, which is in the process of being open sourced. But there has been little good news from Nokia lately. We will see if the revamped Symbian can compete with the brand new iPhone and Android platforms.