With so many apps being released into the Mobile OS eco-system, app marketing has become really important for any app developer in recent times. Without good marketing, an app would be lost in the sea of millions of other apps. It is widely known that Apple’s App Store has been much more profitable for developers, when compared to Google’s Play Store (Previously Market). If you were to compare the two today from a developers point of view, the choice wouldn’t be simple.
According to Nielson, Android has more than 48 percent of the smartphone market, versus 32 percent for iOS, 12 percent for BlackBerry and the remaining 8 percent for other mobile operating systems. Android gets 850,000 activations a day, as well as exceeding 15 Billion app downloads in Google’s Play Store.
Android’s app releasing process makes it much easier for the developers to test the market, as well as quickly release updates to their apps, this is because Android does not have an app approval process. With iOS, it could take a few weeks to get the app onto the app store, because it needs approval from apple.
Searching for apps within the eco-system, would come down to the search engine. Obviously Apple’s App Store is no match against Google’s (largest search engine in the world) Play Store, in terms of search capabilities.
Advertising revenue is the main source of income for many app developers and Google’s own AdSense is next to none in that department. In comparison, iOS offers limited revenue streams, which is the reason we find a lot of apps that are free on Google’s Play Store, but need to be purchased on Apple’s App Store.
Another thing worth mentioning is how people find the apps.People will usually stumble upon apps based on android app reviews from news sites. Apps on Google’s Play Store get many more organic users (finding the app through search), compared to Apple’s App Store. This is because Google offers App marketers control over organic discovery, in turn affecting the ranking of apps, Google’s Play Store determines rank based on a Search algorithm and a Browse Algorithm. In Apple’s App Store ranking leads to organic discovery, rank is determined based on the number of installs, and how recent they are.
It’s obvious who the better choice is in this case. It will be worth keeping an eye on Google’s Play Store over the next 12 months, I am almost certain many developers will be developing more for Android with its increased potential.