Since Android surpassed the iPhone to become the most popular smartphone in the market last year, it was only a matter of time before the Google OS would also become the most popular platform for developers. But not only that, app development on the Android is now the most profitable. To the point that developers are pulling advertising dollars out of iOS based apps and doubling down on the Bot.

Apps not only generate sales, but also advertising and in-app purchase as part of their revenue trifecta. And many apps developers are finding that the larger Android footprint is translating to greater in-app purchases, as well as up to three times more ad clicks within Android apps. Coupling this with three times as many downloads, and the temptation to focus solely on Android is easy to embrace.

“We’ve just been blown away,” says Spacetime CEO Gary Gattis. “Android has become our primary interest.”

Spacetime is a company that has made the conscious decision to follow the money by taking all their advertising out of the iOS version of their popular Pocket Legends game and place it in the Android platform. The thinking is, that with Android’s focus on the gaming community, and the fact that more users play games on Android handsets than iOS handsets, Spacetime can be a big fish in a small pond. But the pond is getting bigger, as Google recently announced it was up to 150,000 applications in the Android Market, and is well on pace to surpass iOS by 2014.

“In some ways, it’s kind of like the wild, wild West,” Gattis says, “but that’s where the gold rush people made their claim…”

[via ComputerWorld]

9 COMMENTS

  1. Yes – but Apple’s aim has always been directly at ‘profitability for Apple’ rather than the strategic broad picture approach of Google. Did you hear Apple were engineering a takeover of Lego? The sets will be more expensive, but apparently their big idea is that the kids will have to apply for a building permit from Apple for each Lego model they make…

  2. Revenue is not profit. One case is just anecdotal evidence. Hopefully this will change over time but for now this is really misleading. Yours truly, a developer.

    • If theory trumped empirical evidence, then iPhone would still be the #1 smartphone…but it isn’t.

      The graphs compare users to users and revenues to revenues, straight across in a game that’s free on both platforms. Unless you can show specific cause (like, say, in-app upgrades cost less on Android), then it sure looks like they’re making higher profits.

      Yours truly, a logician.

  3. “and the fact that more users play games on Android handsets than iOS handsets” — I find this VERY difficult to believe, given all the iOS devices in existence; iPhone’s, iPod’s and iPad’s.

    • Probably meant to say “A larger percentage of Android users play games on their handsets than iOS users” which wouldn’t be surprising, most iPhone users I know don’t do much with their phones and have no more than five apps they installed themselves.

      • Just my experience, I know plenty of people my age with iPhones and the most serious gaming I’ve seen them do is a word game or a free sniper game.

      • My experience is that a huge percentage of iPhone users (average folks, not real geeks and certainly not SV denizens) buy lots of apps…which they never use again, after Day #1. The few I’ve asked mostly used App Store credits they’d received as gifts, not their own money. Maybe this says something about wanting to please the gift-giver, or about peer pressure among phony techies or maybe about wanting to look cool to their non-iPhone pals. Either way, it sure wasn’t done for love of those particular apps.

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