Few developers go into details about what marketing has worked for them and what does not. Tav Shande, developer of the Vanity and CrunchTime apps, explain what marketing worked for making his Vanity app very popular and the professional marketing people whose work did not help the CrunchTime app. Great info and many tanks to Tav Shande!
252 developers filled in a survey about what their apps were making on the iTunes App Store. You can read all of the details, but bascially, few apps are making most of the money.
Only 25 percent of developers have earned more than $30,000 lifetime total revenue selling iOS games and another 25 percent of developers have hauled in less than $200. Four percent of survey respondents have earned more than $1 million in the App Store.
Fierce Mobile Content just published some great info on the number of apps on the top app markets. The info comes from Distimo’s report on app metrics. To quote the article
Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android Market now offers more free mobile applications than Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) rival App Store, according to new data published by app marketplace analytics firm Distimo. Android Market now touts over 134,000 free apps, compared to almost 122,000 free selections in the App Store. The increase of free Android apps is one facet of Android Market’s overall growth: According to Distimo, at its current pace Android Market is expected to offer more total mobile applications than any other store approximately five months from now, followed in descending order by the App Store, Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone Marketplace, Research In Motion’s (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry App World and Nokia’s (NYSE:NOK) Ovi Store.
For now, the App Store remains in front with over 330,000 applications for the iPhone and iPod touch, with the iPad App Store offering over 75,000 tablet-optimized solutions. Android Market is next at more than 206,000 apps. From there, the decline is steep: Ovi Store checks in at almost 30,000, BlackBerry App World is close to 27,000 and Windows Phone Marketplace trails at close to 12,000. “Only moderate growth was observed in most of the application stores over the course of the past several months, however overall growth picked up again in March,” Distimo notes. “The App Store for iPhone is the largest store in terms of all applications available–however, it was among the slowest growing stores in terms of relative growth [last month].”
Distimo adds that despite increasing competition from Android and BlackBerry tablets, the iPad enjoys a sizable lead in the category. Daily downloads in the Top 100 overall paid and free applications for iPad combined exceed 500,000, corresponding to daily revenues of about $400,000, excluding in-app purchases.
Developers at the Informal Android Developer Meetup occasionally ask about the future of Android,especially in comparison to iPhone. The latest news shows that Google’s efforts and Android’s open source programming are paying off. Third party counts of the apps on the Android Market peg the number at 50K, which is quite a nice boost from the 40K or so apps on it last month. The iPhone apps still number around 200K, but many of these apps are probably being converted right now.
The number of iPhone devices are three, the iPhone, the iTouch, and the new iPad. Currently, there are 36 devices running Android. Forecasts have said that there will be about 50 Android devices released this year, about 1 a week, which will keep Android developers busy.
The future of Android looks bright. I have always thought of iPhone as a cell phone on training wheels. It taught people, especially Americans, how to use a smartphone and the potential that smartphones had. Now that people are familiar with smartphones, they can graduate to more advanced smartphones that fit their personalities. We are seeing the past playing out again. Like the PC vs. Mac arguments, the open nature of the Android OS will result in a large number of devices that have a wide range of capabilites and prices. The closed nature of the iPhone will result in a beautiful, well-thought out device that is extremely expensive compared to others and slowly adds new features.
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.
