Is Apples App Store Really a Better Earner than Google Play?
- Wednesday, May 29th, 2013
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Its a commonly accepted truism that, while you might be able to achieve impressive downloads volumes through the Google Play Store, its much harder to monetise these apps than on iOS. According to a Distimo report, thats not necessarily true.
In the case of Mobage, the developer of successful gaming apps including Blood Brothers, its revenues were roughly evenly split between the two platforms in April. Its iOS apps pulled in $5.6m (£3.7m), compared to $5.1m (£3.4m) on Android – and Blood Brothers specifically actually performed better on Android, which accounted for 61 per cent of the apps total $1.8m revenue.
The study also looked at which platform accounted for a higher proportion of revenues in individual countries for three apps – Final Fantasy III, World at Arms, and WhatsApp Messenger. The three were entirely different, with WhatsApp earning more from iOS than Android in almost all cases, while the opposite was true for Final Fantasy III. Finally, World at Arms provided a more even split, but iOS was still the winner in the majority of countries.
Only two countries consistently earned more from Google Play – Germany and Spain – while seven major countries always earned more from the App Store – China, Turkey, Norway, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and New Zealand.
Overall, the App Store does still account for the majority of app revenue. In the US, the daily revenue of the top 200 grossing apps in each store earned $5.1m, 4.6 times more than Google Plays $1.1m.