

iPhone vs Android app sales: numbers from an indie developer - bignoggins

Hey HN,<p>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.<p>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.<p>Date         Android  iPhone<p>Aug 25, 2011 $177.67  $420<p>Aug 24, 2011 $261.30  $382<p>Aug 23, 2011 $386.68  $386<p>Aug 22, 2011 $447.26  $425<p>Aug 21, 2011 $422.18  $585<p>Aug 20, 2011 $280.06  $403<p>Aug 19, 2011 $211.09  $352<p>Aug 18, 2011 $194.37  $388<p>Aug 17, 2011 $357.39  $342<p>Aug 16, 2011 $463.99  $330<p>Aug 15, 2011 $384.55  $407<p>Aug 14, 2011 $376.20  $483<p>Aug 13, 2011 $263.34  $502<p>Aug 12, 2011 $209.00  $508<p>Total            $4428.08 $5914<p>Per Day          $316.29  $422.43<p>So, overall the android version of my app makes about 75% of its iPhone equivalent. This is significantly better than I expected.<p>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.<p>Some quick observations about android from an iOS developer's perspective:<p>1) I think developing <i>quality</i> 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.<p>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).<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
======
avgarrison
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.

~~~
dpcan
Android users are paying, I can attest to that as well. Mind sharing about how
high you rank on iOS?

Also, I just went to download BridgeBasher. Your game wants crazy permissions.
Why should a game have to update my SD card contents, need my location, AND
have access to device calls and identity?

~~~
avgarrison
The permission requirements are ridiculous, but are required for Mobclix. I
would like to get away from all that, with a single requirement for Internet.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
Location permissions are optional. I use MobClix, and I don't ask for
location.

I might be able to get higher eCPMs if I had it enabled, but between GPS
taking more battery (for fine location information) and people being hesitant
to download apps that track their location, I'd rather have the higher
distribution and happier users.

------
dpcan
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.

~~~
psychotik
I develop for Android and iOS too, and Android Market is terrible with
declined purchases and "failed to deliver" issues. What's worse is that there
is no good way to get information about what's wrong and who's affected. In-
app purchases also have terrible bugs on Android - bugs like this
<http://code.google.com/p/marketbilling/issues/detail?id=14> open for months
cause payments to just 'disappear'. The only thing worse than Android Market
bugs is Android Market support. There is no way to get Google's attention, and
emails to support come back with useless, auto-reply messages. I spend at
least 30 minutes a day fiddling with refunds and fixing things up for users
who contact us about problems. It is infuriating - I'm embarrassed for Google.

I haven't had a single bad payment experience with iOS.

~~~
jameyc
So, I'm about to take the plunge into the market, and have been wondering
about this exact issue. How do you deal with it when you get failed to deliver
problems? I mean, you probably can't just give them the apk, that's its own
can of worms... any tips?

~~~
bignoggins
the only thing you can do is tell them to try again at a later date. The
problem is squarely in Google's hands so there isn't much you can do.

------
edawerd
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>

~~~
dpcan
If they don't buy through the market, delivering updates becomes a problem.

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

------
utnick
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

~~~
bignoggins
My app has been fairly popular on the iphone app store for over a year, and
customers were demanding an android port. The only marketing I need to do at
this point is just notify my existing customers that a new version is out.
Everything after that is purely organic.

~~~
snorkel
Great info. Was this app featured prominently in either store at any time, or
just listed rank and file with all the other apps?

~~~
bignoggins
I was never featured on either store. Everything came from organic downloads
and word of mouth.

------
baconner
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.

~~~
dpcan
The orders show up as "Payment Declined" in the order inbox, or "Cancelled by
Google".

If a customer just refunds, then the order just says "Cancelled" and the
details of the order say that the card was successfully authorized.

It's those people that WANT to give you their money but get stopped because of
a Payment Decline or Google Cancel that are ridiculous.

~~~
jwatte
I bet at least 50% of failures are customers trying to use someone else's
card, or habitual charge-backers. What is the experience for each channel 90
days in when actual chargebacks start hitting?

------
zmmmmm
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.

~~~
chc
It got entrenched from Android devs sharing their numbers and those numbers
being lower for Android than iOS. I don't know if other Android devs were
making good money and just didn't want to share that info or if it's gotten
better recently, but it's good to see that it's actually a viable market now.

~~~
dpcan
When iOS became popular, developers spilled the beans left and right about how
successful they were, causing a landslide of competition and a massive
goldrush. I think Android devs with success realized this and have decided
it's better for business just to shut up.

~~~
bignoggins
I think this is silly. Android download info is public (the range anyway). You
can just go to the android market and easily see that the top apps are making
quite a bit of money.

~~~
dpcan
I'm just saying that you may have made a monster mistake by posting your
numbers.

One of our games was making very similar numbers for about 4 months, then a
competitor, a talented college kid, decided he would make a game really
similar to ours and put it out there for free. Not even with ads.

Over the next 4 months, we saw sales drop to about 1/5 of what we were making
in our good months. He has out-ranked us and doesn't seem to have any interest
in making much money tho he as since put in an ad that shows up upon a game-
over.

I'm worried that you just put a nail in your own coffin, and are about a month
or 2 from realizing it... on Android at least.

I wish you good luck. You need to step up your game now and make sure you are
on the very cutting edge. If there's even 1 feature that your users want that
you haven't done yet, that's the one feature that gets the competition an
edge-in on your app.

~~~
bignoggins
i'm not too worried. if it happens it happens. This isn't even my best
performing app by a long shot. Besides, it already has a ton of visibility in
the app store so competitors would naturally arise whether I posted any
numbers or not.

From my experience most successful entrepreneurs don't worry about competitors
that much. They just focus on building the absolute best product they can.

------
switchrodeo720
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.

~~~
smackfu
I think it's an annual app, so the iPhone users need to rebuy it each year at
the start of football season. So it seems a fair comparison.

~~~
jurre
I have to disagree, even though they have to rebuy it he has already had a
year to build up a user-base.

~~~
atomicdog
Yes, brand awareness and commercial goodwill are important.

------
avgarrison
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.

------
rudiger
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.

~~~
bignoggins
thanks! If only I took a rake like the casinos =)

------
stevenwei
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.

------
seancron
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?

~~~
bignoggins
Because the iPad version is a completely different app at a different price
point, so it would skew the results. If I counted iPad/in-app/ad revenue it
would nearly triple the iOS numbers.

~~~
acangiano
Damn, you are doing well. Is it just you behind this operation?

~~~
bignoggins
only me full time. I hire contractors for graphics and some programming.
Android is handled mainly by a friend of mine and we have a 50/50 revenue
share.

I also have another iPhone app that sells much better but it came out recently
so I haven't had a chance to port to iPad or Android yet.

~~~
hello_moto
Is the 50-50 revenue share for all revenue or only for Android?

~~~
bignoggins
android only

------
dageshi
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).

~~~
bignoggins
Sure, if there is enough interest I can do a follow up post. You may have to
pester me about it on twitter or something b/c I'm not really one to put
myself out there on the internet. This is my first major contribution to HN,
I'm a long time lurker.

------
jwatte
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)

~~~
dpcan
I think the difference is that with Apple, you get charged BY Apple, and a
payment to Apple doesnt get declined, but on Google, each dev is a merchant
that the banks aren't recognizin, and we get declined left and right.

------
caseorganic
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.

------
jtellier
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.

~~~
polyfractal
Do you have a blog or anything? I've recently gotten into WP7 coding
(submitted my first WP7 app to AppHub last night!) and am interested in
reading more about people's experiences.

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

~~~
bignoggins
not mutually exclusive. I outsourced the port and in the meantime created a
new iPhone app (which happens to significantly outsell the original that I
ported).

~~~
g-garron
You are genius man!

------
alohahacker
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!!

~~~
bignoggins
market.android.com and click on Top Paid. I think I've dropped as of late.

------
hello_moto
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.

~~~
metachris
Take a look at Jenkins CI -- it can do automatic builds and tests for Android
and iOS.

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

------
sounalath
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?

~~~
bignoggins
My strategy was to target a well-defined niche and dominate it rather than
trying to compete in a saturated category (like games or entertainment). I
think overall polish is extremely important. You can't just release an MVP and
iterate like you can on the web. You really have to hit a homerun from the get
go or you have no chance of survival.

~~~
cageface
This is good advice. It's important to make a big initial splash. It's a
mistake to put out something half-baked with the idea of polishing it later,
unlike the web.

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

~~~
bignoggins
Not until it gains significant marketshare. Supporting Android/iPad/iPhone is
enough to keep me busy for now =)

~~~
mrpither
Fair enough. Currently a 3GS iPhoner, but the temptation of LTE and a larger
screen may be luring me to (or away from depending on who you ask) the dark
side. I've enjoyed your iOS hockey app, but one app won't make my decision on
which phone I choose.

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

~~~
bignoggins
iPad is pretty much identical revenue to iPhone.

~~~
iaskwhy
Thank you!

------
kjbake01
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.

------
usagi7
Pretty awesome stats. Great job, man! Good insight.

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

~~~
dpcan
What are you answering? I think his post goes to show that this statement
isn't really true.

Android users are willing to pay for quality apps, and the lack there-of has
made your statement somewhat more true in the beginning of Android, but not so
much anymore.

------
marquis
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.

~~~
Anti-Ratfish
Can you expand on that? What are the issues?

~~~
gte910h
One I can think of now: It doesn't tell you when someone with prior versions
of the OS tries to download something you built with too high of a deployment
target. This happens so often right now with the Verizon iPhone versioning
being <4.3.

~~~
Anti-Ratfish
Good point. That guy Marco from instapaper talked about this issue some time
ago but didn't mention that apple makes it hard to specify a minimum os
version in any kind of informed way.

