Google's lack of oversight in the Play store (which is actually a core philosophy) is really holding back Android.
There are countless really, really crappy apps and clones crowding the app store. Plus, since most people pirate, developers can't make money (Monument Valley saw around 95% piracy rate and just $250k in revenue from Android, vs. $5.5M from iOS).
This sunk Windows Mobile, which I still believe has the best UI of the bunch (sadly, it also had a shit app store and tons of bugs).
The problem with the Monument Valley numbers is that they expected a hit game on iOS would magically translate in to a hit game on Android and that's really not the case.
The two stores are completely separate, your popularity on either will not help you on the latter unless you're bringing a big marketing budget with you or have something truly unique and viral.
There are plenty of popular Android games that have virtually no player base on iOS.
> expected a hit game on iOS would magically translate in to a hit game on Android and that's really not the case.
Why not? Shouldn't a good game sell well on any platform?
> The two stores are completely separate, your popularity on either will not help you on the latter unless you're bringing a big marketing budget with you or have something truly unique and viral.
Perhaps it won't sell as well on Android in relative numbers (attach rate to total devices), but it is a truly unique game that many people talked about.
> There are plenty of popular Android games that have virtually no player base on iOS.
Honestly I would LOVE a list of a few (emulators/clones don't count). With the exception of that AR game that Google made I have never heard of a mobile game (from friends, game sites, etc.) that wasn't available on iOS.
I genuinely don't know of any, but I've wondered about this quite a bit.
Well, if the paying 5% are worth $250k, then the they could have made $50m from Google Play! Then again, people grounded in reality realize that every pirated copy is not equitable to a sale without any piracy, and there are many, many things that could account for the difference in profit per market, such as quality of port, rating in market, exposure in ecosystem, inclusion in the top apps list, etc.
The numbers you gave are interesting, but there's very little to show how well they correlate.
Edit: Assuming you are going off the data from techcrunch[1], I'm thinking that 95% piracy rate is not quire right. First, it's mentioned as something they "revealed previously" which means we can make very few assumptions about it, and second, they state it was installed on over 10m total unique devices (including multiple installs from a purchase, family share and unlicensed copies). Considering they list over 2.5m licensed copies sold, with almost 800k of them being for android (and half of that being free amazon giveaways), I'm thinking that 95% number doesn't make much sense. Also, 400k plus free copies given away by Amazon? That may affect sales...
You'll have to back up your "shit app store" claim in regards to Windows Phone... I decided try out all-MS with the purchase of a Nokia Icon last year and the integration has been phenomenal. I've also noticed only one bug (in IE of course), and the phone rarely restarts itself like my Droid Maxx often does. Rudy Huyn also creates solid clones of every single popular Andy/iOS app.
The UI is cleaner, Nokia Maps > Google Maps especially for Navigation (full GPS offline nav has saved me more than once), complete MS Office app integration, Outlook email client is slick, camera is better than Android/iOS, OneDrive integration works perfectly. I've been very surprised at how well executed it is, and 8.1 promises to be even better with Cortana, etc.
To date I've had one app that didn't have an equivalent from WinPhone devs, that was the Amazon Seller App. Then again, I don't spend time playing phone games so I'm not the target market. I keep a Droid Maxx around in case there's a niche app I absolutely must use.
Are you serious? Maybe things have changed, but when I had a Windows Phone and did a (hopeful) search for any mildly popular app, I was greeted search results full of blatant rip offs. Same name, same icon, except published by some random dude in China.
I think the real major difference is the psychological factor: Google as a brand stands for "free": Gmail, search, YouTub.. You name the top major Google products or brands, and they are considered free in most consumers minds.
You then look at Apple, and what do their users think of the brand? Expensive maybe, but valuable or luxury. This brand identity carries over into the App Store / play store comparisons quite heavily.
It would really curious to compare metrics between the two sites with regard to the ratio of free vs non-free browsing of apps between the two marketplaces.. I suspect Play has a higher ratio of free-loaders vs Apple App Store.
I think you are spot on with the "free" perception of Google products, and by extension, Android.
I am one of the freeloaders on Android. I have bought a few apps but I mainly go for the free ones, even if they had advertising. It's a real pity really because I know the effort needed to write an app (I have done a few for Android).
Under iOS, I know I am going to have to BUY most apps, as there aren't that many free ones! Also, I had to sell a kidney to buy the device in the first place so I am expecting to have to fork out money - I know it was an "investment".
The same sort of goes for Mac hardware - I always thought it overpriced rubbish and expensive until I actually had the money to buy one and then suddenly it wasn't quite so bad.
> There are countless really, really crappy apps and clones crowding the [play] store.
TBF, the app store's main problem is app discoverability - I think only 1% of the apps actually sells well enough, the others are only found if you actively look for them. And the formula behind the Apple app store hasn't changed in forever - actually the only thing they changed was allowing (short) videos and a change in how they present in-app purchase-funded apps, which dominate the 'free' listings (of course).
There are countless really, really crappy apps and clones crowding the app store. Plus, since most people pirate, developers can't make money (Monument Valley saw around 95% piracy rate and just $250k in revenue from Android, vs. $5.5M from iOS).
This sunk Windows Mobile, which I still believe has the best UI of the bunch (sadly, it also had a shit app store and tons of bugs).