Android Market Payouts Total 2% of App Store’s $1B

Overall we estimate that $6,000,000 has been paid out to developers for games, and $15,000,000 has been paid out on apps. That is a total of $21,000,000, almost 50x lower than the amount paid out to devs on iPhone.

Certainly, in terms of developers wanting to make money from selling an app, it seems the iPhone pays better. However, I wonder how much money has been made indirectly, such as a web application providing an Android tie in. True, the same could be said of the iPhone.

I think part of it can be blamed on how the Android Market is interacted with. You currently can’t view the whole market on your desktop. You can only view it from your device. And honestly, many Android owners just don’t use their phone as much. So they don’t browse the Android Market looking for cool new games and applications to use.

The Apple culture also encourages pricier things. On the Mac, one of the complaints I’ve heard from non-geeks when considering moving to a Mac is that cost of software. Things you can find for Windows cost much less (often, free versions exist) than a similar program on the Mac. So same thing for the Android: people who are used to Windows are used to being able to find a cheap or free program to do simple tasks.