

Android now more profitable than iOS for well-known game developer - sadiq
http://blogs.computerworld.com/17941/android_ios_app_profit

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j79
Wouldn't it be ironic if Steve Jobs, during his iPad 2 keynote, drove
developers to the Android market by pointing out the low app number for
tablets?

With just 100 apps for Android tablets, NOW seems like the perfect chance to
get your app noticed by being first on the market...

~~~
dmotz
If I remember correctly, the first iPad shipped without a calculator app, so
the first 3rd party calculator apps made a killing (and Apple made their 30%).
I'm guessing the same might be seen with Android Tablets.

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codelust
Which of the following scenarios are unlikely?

1\. iOS triumphs everything else as the one mobile OS to rule them all.
Everything else dies.

2\. Android triumphs everything else as the one mobile OS to rule them all.
Everything else dies.

3\. In the big wide world, both iOS and Android do well, appealing to
different masses and classes. The developer ecosystem also makes money off
both platforms, albeit in different ways.

I use the above question to grok most of the stories in the tech community
these days. And I think both are fine platforms that appeal to different
people in different ways.

Yes, a popular game is making more money off Android than Apple. So what?
Tomorrow there will be another story about someone making more money off iOS
than Android.

The Wired story on Rovio posted yesterday has many points relevant to this
madness. They optimized towards maximizing their profits from all available
platforms by adapting to the strengths and weaknesses of each platform.

Honestly, companies that succeed for any reasonable periods of time all do
that. The whole 'kill x' angle is the breathless reporting and commentary that
plagues most material on tech these days. It has little place in the real
world.

~~~
rbarooah
Format wars have sometimes ended up with one winner, and then there's the
windows precedent.

I think a lot of the polarization comes from fear of one side or the other
'winning' - a fear that isn't entirely baseless.

~~~
blub
Except iOS and Android have the exact same format - large touch screen. The
technical differences won't be relevant to 99% of customers, it's the
advertising and brand recognition that will make the difference.

~~~
Kadin
By that token, VHS and Betamax both had the "exact same format" of magnetic
tape in plastic boxes. Their similarities didn't stop one from driving the
other out of the consumer market.

Personally, I suspect that Apple has lots of time before Android chokes off
the smartphone market, and even longer in the tablet space. But eventually,
the commodity-hardware producers are going to do to those devices what Compaq
et al did for PCs; Apple will have to decide between marketshare and margin,
and I suspect they'll choose margin even if it makes them decreasingly
relevant. But by that point maybe they can invent some new niche.

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spaznode
Omg "Pocket Legends"?

You know why it's doing better on Android? Because iOS has much better games
in the same genre as pocket legends. Maybe this is just a story about how
android users are so desperate for games - any games - that this "ok-ish" game
on iOS turned out to be a real windfall for them there. Good for them.

On iOS I'd rather play KnightsRush or battleheart (or the new space game,
don't remember the name but it makes pocket legends look like the retarded dos
era game that it is) any day.

~~~
oldstrangers
The fanboy is strong with this one.

~~~
CountSessine
Meh. This is pretty typical among game fans, especially online competitive
game fans. And I say that as a game programmer. And what he lacks in subtlety
he makes up in passion and enthusiasm. He doesn't like the game. Oh well.
Still, the basic point he makes is legit - with less compelling games in the
field, the mediocre ones get a brighter spotlight shone on them.

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somebear
I would be interesting to see comparison from a well-known game developer
focusing more on up front purchase price. Don't get me wrong, I think it's
awesome that Spacetime Studios is so profitable on Android, but I would like
to see how it compares for paid apps, especially since there seems to be an
impression that Android users don't pay for apps (at least not up front).

Regarding the comments in the article about ad click-through, my personal
hypothesis is that iOS users are more used to paying for apps up front, and ad
financed apps are not the norm, therefore people filter out the ads in their
brains. On Android it seems to be the other way around.

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AndreSegers
This is very impressive, though I wonder how much of their success may be due
to the significantly smaller amount of competing games on Android vs iOS?

~~~
nextparadigms
That's exactly the point. Android is a more virgin market, so more potential
there, especially for the tablet apps market. It turns out Scoble WAS right
about Xoom and Honeycomb:

[http://scobleizer.com/2011/03/04/developers-why-you-
should-b...](http://scobleizer.com/2011/03/04/developers-why-you-should-build-
for-android-tablets/)

~~~
bonch
One developer with an average game that has no competitors (unlike on iOS)
means Scoble was right?

One of his arguments is that the platform is slower and less efficient than
iOS, so developers are going to want to target it to show off their programing
skill or something. It's a ridiculous article full of wishful thinking.

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MicahSeff
And it seems that WP7 might ultimately be even more profitable for devs than
Android.

[http://mobilitydigest.com/despite-smaller-base-devs-see-
high...](http://mobilitydigest.com/despite-smaller-base-devs-see-higher-
returns-on-wp7-compared-to-android/)

I don't know if there is one single takeaway from this info. It seems like the
dearth of competitive games on both platforms at this point when compared to
the iOS must at least be partly responsible for the higher returns.

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jcizzle
I think we can all agree that a substantial number of Android supporters are a
bit on the tech/geeky side - commonly presenting device specs and openness as
a point of superiority over iOS.

I think we also can agree that most MMO players are on the tech/geeky side.

Thus, Android's consumer base is particularly well-suited to support a MMO.

Regardless, if I have to read one more article about what mobile OS is better,
I'm going to lose my mind. Who cares? Unless you own a few thousand shares in
any of these companies, you shouldn't. When I see these, I immediately picture
two fat people arguing whether Popeye's or KFC is better.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I don't think the average Android owner could be described as "geeky" any more
than the average iPhone user can tell the difference between Arial and
Helvetica.

It's easy to find vocal examples of these extremes online but smartphones are
basically replacing featurephones, very soon everyone will have one. Already
the market penetration numbers are so high that I doubt the average iPhone or
Android user could be distinguished much from each other, or from non-
smartphone users.

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awj
So ... they make money through in-app purchases _and_ advertising?

Maybe that's the problem on iPhones? Seems like any time you ask people for
cash after subjecting them to ads they get seriously pissed. On Android the
market is smaller, so the options are slimmer and people are less picky about
that sort of thing.

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tuhin
Some smaller pitfalls in the logic:

1) The game Pocket legends: There might be far superior games on iOS

2) The crowd that owns iPhone is not interested in such an app at all

3)Games of such genre do not perform well on iOS

The point I want to make is that one app developer's one single games data is
too small of a _sample data_ to make any serious claims.

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jarin
Looks like they have discovered the magic formula: "being a big fish in a
small pond".

------
zrgiu
one drop in a big pond...

------
r00fus
I've never even heard of Pocket Legends before, much less the developer.

~~~
Niten
And what point are you trying to make?

Their game is getting 12-13k downloads per day and has made best-of lists on
Mashable and MSNBC; clearly they are well known, even if you are not
personally aware of them.

~~~
pflats
I'm pretty sure the point (which was not quite adeptly-made) is that calling
Spacetime a "well-known game developer" is overselling the company by a bit.

I'd never heard of them before either. They're clearly doing a great job in
the mobile space, but when I read "well-known game developer", I think of
companies a few orders of magnitude larger than Spacetime.

For a company with wider brand recognition - whether it's Rovio (Angry Birds)
or Blizzard or Harmonix (Rock Band) or whomever to do better on Android than
iOS, that'd signal something a bit larger. Which is what I was expecting this
article to be about.

