iPhone vs Android app sales: numbers from an indie developer

by bignoggins on 8/26/2011, 7:18 PM with 91 comments

Hey HN,

I've been a full time indie iPhone developer for about 9 months. I've recently ported my 2nd highest selling iPhone app to Android. Here is a comparison for the first 2 weeks of sales. If other iOS developers are out there that are thinking of porting to android, I hope this may be of help.

To keep things fair I'm only comparing one version of my paid iphone app to its android equivalent (Fantasy Football Monster '11). This does not include any ad revenue, in app purchases or iPad sales.

Date Android iPhone

Aug 25, 2011 $177.67 $420

Aug 24, 2011 $261.30 $382

Aug 23, 2011 $386.68 $386

Aug 22, 2011 $447.26 $425

Aug 21, 2011 $422.18 $585

Aug 20, 2011 $280.06 $403

Aug 19, 2011 $211.09 $352

Aug 18, 2011 $194.37 $388

Aug 17, 2011 $357.39 $342

Aug 16, 2011 $463.99 $330

Aug 15, 2011 $384.55 $407

Aug 14, 2011 $376.20 $483

Aug 13, 2011 $263.34 $502

Aug 12, 2011 $209.00 $508

Total $4428.08 $5914

Per Day $316.29 $422.43

So, overall the android version of my app makes about 75% of its iPhone equivalent. This is significantly better than I expected.

One more data point. The android app is currently about 250ish overall top paid, and the iPhone version is 350ish. Take from that what you will.

Some quick observations about android from an iOS developer's perspective:

1) I think developing quality apps is easier on iOS. I'm actually a Java/.NET developer by profession so I should naturally be biased toward Android. But once you get past the initial learning curve, I think that Cocoa Touch APIs get you 90% of the way there, whereas Android APIs get you about 30% of the way there. That is to say, if you want a lot of the nice UI touches you're used to on the iphone, you'll have to spend much more effort getting there on Android. The main advantage I feel Android has is memory management, but the reference counting method that Objective-C uses is second nature once you are familiar with the fundamentals.

2) Android gives you REAL TIME sales analysis. This is pretty incredible. Yes you can somewhat simulate this on iPhone using 3rd party analytics, but being able to see the moment someone bought your app just brings my obsession with checking sales and stats to another level. You also get your daily reports much sooner (about 12:30AM PST as opposed to 5-6AM PST).

3) Android market screws up orders quite a bit. In fact, almost 20% of all orders are declined or cancelled due to some android market error. After checking forums, it seems like this is not unusual. Now, I don't know if this means I have 20% lost sales, but still disturbing nonetheless. In android's defense, apple actually never gives you this level of detail. To my knowledge, you don't know if users can't buy your app due to an app store error. But judging from the fact that we get e-mails about this issue every other day on android and I've never gotten a single e-mail about this in the past 15 months I've been on the app store is very telling. Google has GOT to fix this. Developers lose, customers lose, and google loses.

In conclusion, I feel like the Android Market has really come into its own. The common wisdom that android owners do not pay for apps is demonstrably false. They may not pay as much per user for apps as iPhone owners, but the enormous marketshare Android commands is just too much to ignore.

I'll try to address any questions or comments in a timely manner, but I'm currently in Europe so please forgive me I don't get to all of them. Thanks for reading.

  • by avgarrison on 8/26/2011, 8:58 PM

    It may be worthwhile for me to chime in here with my own stats, which are far less impressive than bignoggins. I recently ported my iOS app, BridgeBasher, to Android. I took a different route though. Since I had no users on Android, I thought the best thing to do would be to create an ad-based version on Android, mostly because I've heard a lot of people say that Android users are less likely to pay for apps. I decided on using Mobclix for advertising, and here are my stats:

    Date - Android / iOS

     8/7/2011 - $2.16 / $142.00

     8/8/2011 - $1.68 / $97.00

     8/9/2011 - $1.15 / $84.00

     8/10/2011 - $1.82 / $76.00

     8/11/2011 - $0.98 / $78.00

     8/12/2011 - $0.57 / $103.00

     8/13/2011 - $0.59 / $88.00

     8/14/2011 - $0.72 / $102.00

     8/15/2011 - $0.43 / $74.00

     8/16/2011 - $0.44 / $75.00

     8/17/2011 - $0.18 / $88.00

    Total - $10.54 / $1,007.00

    This is obviously comparing apples to oranges, since the iOS version is paid ($0.99) and the Android version is ad revenue only, however given bignoggins success with a paid app on Android, I'm thinking I have made a mistake going the free route on Android.

  • by dpcan on 8/26/2011, 8:27 PM

    I agree, the bloodbath of "Payment Declined" orders in our order inbox is downright infuriating. This is especially painful when customers email us saying that they purchase apps all the time on Android and their card didn't work only when they tried to order our games.

    Agreed, this problem needs to be solved.

  • by edawerd on 8/26/2011, 10:35 PM

    Regarding #3, I wrote a script that automatically emails the 20% of customers who get their orders declined, asking them to purchase the app directly through me using PayPal. A surprising number of them do. It's not a perfect solution, but at least it recovers some lost revenue. You can have this feature available for your app through http://www.AndroidLicenser.com

  • by Pewpewarrows on 8/26/2011, 7:38 PM

    Glad to see actual numbers rather than the usual circle-jerk of "only iOS makes money".

  • by utnick on 8/26/2011, 8:27 PM

    Interesting, what kind of marketing are you doing for the app? How are people hearing about it, just market searches?

    1000+ downloads of a 2.99 app in the first couple weeks is pretty impressive, well done

  • by baconner on 8/26/2011, 9:01 PM

    Another android dev with (much) lower volume here. Curious how you know about errors driving that 20% number. Is there a report somewhere with this detail or is it just inferred from customer emails? The only failures I ever see come through are declined credit cards or the regular cancellations from users who used the 15min refund window.

  • by zmmmmm on 8/26/2011, 11:52 PM

    Thanks for helping to dispel this myth that has somehow developed that Android users "don't buy apps". I don't know how this idea got so entrenched. You can definitely make an argument that they buy somewhat less, but it's completely misleading to say they never buy any, which is what you will see commonly stated around the net.

  • by switchrodeo720 on 8/26/2011, 8:04 PM

    It doesn't look like this is a fair comparison. If you ported your app from IOS to Android, then presumably the IOS version has had the opportunity to gain popularity already, which the Android version has not. I'm not a mobile app dev, but I assume that it takes some time before an app can gain popularity and hit it's sales peak.

    It may make more sense to compare the first two weeks of IOS sales to the first two weeks of Android sales, even though they'll be different dates. Or, maybe that is what you're comparing and I just missed something.

  • by avgarrison on 8/26/2011, 8:38 PM

    Thanks for posting your figures! What did you do to advertise the new app on Android? I have recently ported one of my games from iOS to Android and even though it is free on Android, it is really having trouble getting traction, and this is even after sending an e-mail to 40k people and several hundred dollars in Admob advertising.

    Edit: Ah, nevermind, I see you already answered this in your reply to utnick.

  • by rudiger on 8/26/2011, 9:06 PM

    Just want to say thanks. I bought the $2.99 iPhone app, and the ease of managing my team has definitely made me a few hundred dollars from bets with our pool over the season.

  • by stevenwei on 8/26/2011, 7:33 PM

    Thanks for the raw data. We've been considering doing an Android port but were not sure whether the resulting revenue would make it worthwhile. I'm glad to see that the Android paid app market is picking up steam.

  • by seancron on 8/26/2011, 8:01 PM

    Any reason you didn't include iPad sales? There are also Android tablets, so unless none of your sales are for Honeycomb users it might not be a fair comparison.

    I'd also be interested in seeing how it changes when you take into account ad revenue and in-app purchases. Do the numbers stay as close when you add them, or does one platform take the lead?

  • by on 8/26/2011, 8:40 PM

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  • by dageshi on 8/26/2011, 8:11 PM

    Very useful, thank you, could you keep us updated perhaps? It would be interesting to see how this matures as your app becomes more established in the android marketplace (or if this makes any difference at all).

  • by jwatte on 8/27/2011, 6:27 AM

    Taking credit cards is hard. You get random declines from merchant banks all the time. I bet the app store simply doesn't tell you about it. Not a single decline in 15 months? Hardly likely. 20% of all attempted virtual purchases bouncing sounds not unreasonable if you compare to other markets (pc, game credits, etc)

  • by jtellier on 8/27/2011, 3:06 AM

    I have actually found my Phone 7 has 4x my android, blackberry, WebOS, and iOS app sales combined.... Probably because the market isn't flooded yet. Android was my lowest, iOS next, then Blackberry, followed by webOS. If you can hit markets people do not yet find viable, that may very well be your key to success.

  • by caseorganic on 8/26/2011, 8:12 PM

    Thanks so much for this.

    This is helpful information and something I always wanted to see side-by-side. It's also very nice to see that it seems like in some cases it is worth making an Android port, but that you, even as a Java/.NET developer by profession find it more difficult to create a quality app on Android.

  • by g-garron on 8/27/2011, 1:40 PM

    For 75%, it well worth the effort of porting the app, instead of creating a new one for the iPhone.

  • by alohahacker on 8/27/2011, 2:43 PM

    you said you are ranking 250ish on android right now.

    what is the best way to find your ranking on android? is their a website or tool or did you just go on the market and scroll down and counted till you saw your app?

    awesome numbers btw! thanks!!

  • by hello_moto on 8/27/2011, 5:39 PM

    Do you have any automation test? How's the testing and build infrastructure in both Android and iPhone/iPad?

    Would love to be able to automate the build/test/deploy using some sort of continuous integration or something.

  • by g-garron on 8/27/2011, 2:01 PM

    Thanks for this post man, It helped me a lot with this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2931430 question.

  • by sounalath on 8/26/2011, 10:16 PM

    just curious, what is the magic formula for high iOS downloads whether paid or free? good graphics? games? how do you go from zero downloads to many with new apps?

  • by mrpither on 8/26/2011, 8:10 PM

    Any plans to add winphone7 version now that it's mango time??

  • by iaskwhy on 8/26/2011, 7:52 PM

    Thanks for the details. Feel like sharing numbers for the iPad too? Please?

  • by kjbake01 on 8/27/2011, 6:14 PM

    as an iPhone to Android refugee, I'd add that android users are driven more by function rather than magic, and that probably affects the value they place on apps.

  • by usagi7 on 8/26/2011, 7:36 PM

    Pretty awesome stats. Great job, man! Good insight.

  • by hockeybias on 8/26/2011, 9:24 PM

    Thanks!

  • by haydenevans on 8/26/2011, 11:15 PM

    Simple yet biased answer: Android owners want free apps, iOS users are more willing to pay.

  • by marquis on 8/26/2011, 8:24 PM

    There are huge issues buying content on iTunes. Apple doesn't fix it or tell you, or help you get in touch with the developer to work around it.