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I'm not 100% sure on this, but I've suspected that this often-quoted disparity has something to do with China, and how Apple still controls iOS app distribution

by 015a 5y ago

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I've suspected that this often-quoted disparity has something to do with China, and how Apple still controls iOS app distribution in China but the Play Store has much lower usage. So, you get weird aggregates because the total revenue numbers don't include the Chinese specific Android app stores (which, by the way, are insane; Huawei takes a 50% commission on game sales in their's, and its the biggest by far). All given the size of the Chinese market, their love of mobile games, and the massive portion of App Store revenue games represent. That's not to say the App Store isn't more profitable than the Play Store, per user, just in the US, but its a closer margin here, and I think the massive disparity on a global scale has to signal that something else is going on (in addition to the obvious: Apple doesn't make good cheap phones, just not in their DNA, but Android manufacturers do, so lower income individuals will bias toward Android phones, and these people would spend less in the associated application stores)

alexkcd 5y ago
iOS apps are more profitable on a per install basis. So the discrepancy cannot be explained by there being multiple Android stores. Your hypothesis in brackets is the more likely explanation. Source: I worked on an app with millions of paid subscribers.
- oblio 5y ago
  iPhone had first mover advantage and comes from an American company. As a result iPhones have 50% of the smartphone market in the US, and Americans have the highest disposable income per capita of any large country (>20 million people). iPhones tend to have much smaller market shares outside of the US. In some places they're maybe around 30% but generally they're much, much lower.
  - Grustaf 5y ago
    iPhone has a smaller market share in poor countries. In rich European countries the market share is much higher than in the US. In Scandinavia seeing an Android phone is a rare occurrence, if your friend has one you're surprised and ask how come. It's a function of wealth, not first mover advantage. Well off people choose iPhones. That should tell you something.
  - alexkcd 5y ago
    The demographic for our app was primarily the US.
ksec 5y ago
Somewhat true. There are 300M iPhone install base in China, on an equal bases you can take the 30% of App Store Revenue away to compare to Google's Play Store. But generally speaking iOS user spend double the amount of money compared to Android users. And to the OP's number, Apple has ~25% market share. Not 20%. Those numbers are shipments, not usage. which is for the 100th times meaningless in nearly all topics.
- 015a 5y ago
  Right, yeah. There's just so many unknowns when it comes to "how profitable are App Stores" that any conversation about it is seriously pointless. Like, I don't even want to guess; I refuse to believe that iOS is more profitable than Android, because I'm not even sure if that's the right question. All the data we have on global/domestic smartphone shipments, active users, monthly actives, daily actives, dollars spent, ruples spent, per app category, minus games, fiscal/calendar quarterly, it all comes from these dodgy "Global Insights" app consulting firms. You head to Google and search "App Store Quarterly Revenue" and you find a different Statista or BusinessOfApps or whatever site each quarter, all their data just linear extrapolations from active pings from trackers they pay apps to install which are increasingly getting blocked by OS security controls. Google and Apple almost never share explicit data (this Epic trial has been a nice departure from that, to be fair); if they share anything, its an overtly generalized market segment like "Services", which of course they're using to inflate the apparent revenue of bad business divisions they want to look good by combining them with the actually good divisions (same reason why Microsoft put Azure in the same shareholder-reported category as Office early on; of course, nowadays, its amazing on its own). And then, re-read that last paragraph and realize I said "Google & Apple" and you didn't even blink. Sure, Google & Apple, that's who we're talking about. No; we're talking about Android & iOS. Android; that operating system that has unlocked computing for the entire world, including vast swaths of people who can barely afford plumbing and electricity, that's side-loaded and hacked to the ends of the earth, that's startlingly popular and preloaded with hardware-specific storefronts in countries that, traditionally, don't like sharing data with the west. Sure, "your" app was more profitable per-install on iOS than Android. An excellent, informative experiment. The assertion is that iOS has "special sauce" that makes consumers money-drunk, and they spend more. Did we control for income disparity? Surprise; No. Did we aggregate a broad swath of consumer application categories, including (especially) gaming, as gaming is by-far the largest source of consumer application spending, globally? Surprise; No. How's this sound: People spend a shit-ton of money in apps. This fact, alone, is reason enough that letting a single company gatekeep the experience for any significant number of people is unacceptable. Justifying Apple's monopoly by saying they're better at making consumers money-drunk is psychotic.
asutekku 5y ago
iPhone users are much more willing to buy IAPs outside of china too. So it’s not just china that brings in the money.

by 015a 5y ago

alexkcd 5y ago

iOS apps are more profitable on a per install basis. So the discrepancy cannot be explained by there being multiple Android stores. Your hypothesis in brackets is the more likely explanation. Source: I worked on an app with millions of paid subscribers.

oblio 5y ago
iPhone had first mover advantage and comes from an American company. As a result iPhones have 50% of the smartphone market in the US, and Americans have the highest disposable income per capita of any large country (>20 million people). iPhones tend to have much smaller market shares outside of the US. In some places they're maybe around 30% but generally they're much, much lower.
- Grustaf 5y ago
  iPhone has a smaller market share in poor countries. In rich European countries the market share is much higher than in the US. In Scandinavia seeing an Android phone is a rare occurrence, if your friend has one you're surprised and ask how come. It's a function of wealth, not first mover advantage. Well off people choose iPhones. That should tell you something.
- alexkcd 5y ago
  The demographic for our app was primarily the US.

ksec 5y ago

Somewhat true. There are 300M iPhone install base in China, on an equal bases you can take the 30% of App Store Revenue away to compare to Google's Play Store. But generally speaking iOS user spend double the amount of money compared to Android users. And to the OP's number, Apple has ~25% market share. Not 20%. Those numbers are shipments, not usage. which is for the 100th times meaningless in nearly all topics.

015a 5y ago
Right, yeah. There's just so many unknowns when it comes to "how profitable are App Stores" that any conversation about it is seriously pointless. Like, I don't even want to guess; I refuse to believe that iOS is more profitable than Android, because I'm not even sure if that's the right question. All the data we have on global/domestic smartphone shipments, active users, monthly actives, daily actives, dollars spent, ruples spent, per app category, minus games, fiscal/calendar quarterly, it all comes from these dodgy "Global Insights" app consulting firms. You head to Google and search "App Store Quarterly Revenue" and you find a different Statista or BusinessOfApps or whatever site each quarter, all their data just linear extrapolations from active pings from trackers they pay apps to install which are increasingly getting blocked by OS security controls. Google and Apple almost never share explicit data (this Epic trial has been a nice departure from that, to be fair); if they share anything, its an overtly generalized market segment like "Services", which of course they're using to inflate the apparent revenue of bad business divisions they want to look good by combining them with the actually good divisions (same reason why Microsoft put Azure in the same shareholder-reported category as Office early on; of course, nowadays, its amazing on its own). And then, re-read that last paragraph and realize I said "Google & Apple" and you didn't even blink. Sure, Google & Apple, that's who we're talking about. No; we're talking about Android & iOS. Android; that operating system that has unlocked computing for the entire world, including vast swaths of people who can barely afford plumbing and electricity, that's side-loaded and hacked to the ends of the earth, that's startlingly popular and preloaded with hardware-specific storefronts in countries that, traditionally, don't like sharing data with the west. Sure, "your" app was more profitable per-install on iOS than Android. An excellent, informative experiment. The assertion is that iOS has "special sauce" that makes consumers money-drunk, and they spend more. Did we control for income disparity? Surprise; No. Did we aggregate a broad swath of consumer application categories, including (especially) gaming, as gaming is by-far the largest source of consumer application spending, globally? Surprise; No. How's this sound: People spend a shit-ton of money in apps. This fact, alone, is reason enough that letting a single company gatekeep the experience for any significant number of people is unacceptable. Justifying Apple's monopoly by saying they're better at making consumers money-drunk is psychotic.

asutekku 5y ago

iPhone users are much more willing to buy IAPs outside of china too. So it’s not just china that brings in the money.