Making money from paid apps in Android Market a challenge for app developers

It has been revealed from the study conducted by app analytics firm, Distimo, that it is relatively more difficult for the app developers to earn money by developing their apps in Google Android Market rather than putting it in Apple App Store, using the one-off fee model. The finding of the study were revealed publically this week illustrating that, evaluating all the paid apps in the Google Android Market, almost 80% of them are only downloaded less than 100 times.

Image via Wikipedia

Distimo also revealed that it’s “more challenging for developers in the Google Android Market than in the Apple App Store to monetize using a one-off fee monetization model.” The actual big sellers in the Android market are only two, whereas if we compare Apple paid apps downloaded, it accounts more than half a million. Moreover Apple App Store has almost six total big sellers of paid apps, only accounted for two month time period and within US alone.  Moreover, if we consider the stats, there are almost five paid games in the Android market which are downloaded more than 250,000 times. But if we consider the same for Apple App Store, again in two months time period only, there twice as many, i.e. ten, paid games which have been downloaded more than 250,000 times within U.S.

Distimo identifies the reasons justifying why it is difficult for Android paid apps to be downloaded more often because “the top charts in the Google Android Market change very little over time. This is caused by the fact that Google also takes long-term performance of applications into account in order to rank applications.” Hence, if we even evaluate both the top app charts in the Android store and App Store, it was visible that the apps in the Apple charts change considerably more frequently than Android store. This gives the apps on Apple store greater exposure and adds more versatility to the store, consequentially increasing the sales of more apps.

Alternative to one-off fee monetization model, most of the Android app developers are not considering choosing the ad-supported apps. Distimo also reviews the Rovio’s Angry Birds to be an example in this case. C.E.O. of Rovia confirmed that “All the Angry Birds series in the Google Android Market are free and feature ads, while in the Apple App Store, these same applications are all paid applications with far fewer ads.”

Related articles

• RIM Almost Hits the Lowest Rate of Its Shares in 2 Years, Facing the Recalls of Some Playbooks (loudtech.blogspot.com)
• A Comparative Study of Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market (loudtech.blogspot.com)
• Apple Rumored to Be Adding the Build-To-Order Mac Feature in Its iOS App Store App (loudtech.blogspot.com)