I keep thinking about porting my app over to Android, but every time I do I read terrible things about their Marketplace and that most developers aren't making much money. However, I'm thinking that even if it's not a goldmine now, it might make sense to try and get in early for when they do actually get it right. The latest Droid phones are finally getting pretty good. Not as elegant as the iPhone, but in terms of features, a lot of them already surpass the iPhone. So I don't doubt that in the next year, Android will start piling on the customers in much larger numbers.
Anyone here an Android developer or know someone who is? If so, is there money to be made? Any tips?
I develop for both, and i have my own apps in both.
dont waste your time with android.
biggest problem with the android store (IMO), is they have no iTunes equivalent.
come-on, when was the last time you used the appstore app on your iphone for anything serious. and the android store app on android phones is no where as good as the iphone app store app.
without a desktop itunes for android, its junk.
my best app sells $1000 +/- a month on the appstore, last month on android, it sold 4 units (made $2.80).
If anything, use your time to make an iPad version, even though the iPad sales are terrible, they are still 100X better than android.
man, why did you start this thread, i was in a good mood until i saw "android".....
total waste of time, after your app falls off the recently released, your pretty much hosed.
I guess I'm looking to get in early. Even if it sucks now, maybe they'll turn it around and the ones who got in early will be rewarded. The apps which were top sellers in the app store when it first started are still some of the top sellers now. It really paid off to get in early on the app store, so if there's a chance the same is true for Android, it may be worth the effort.
I use the app store on my iPhone all the time, that's where I download all my apps, I never use the app store in iTunes.
Android has some major problems for sure, and without any DRM it seems like piracy must be crazy, but there's no way Google could go much longer without fixing all these issues if they want to complete with Apple. My hopes is that Apple continues to dominate and eventually offers phones on Verizon too, but sometimes it's worth hedging your bets.
Thanks for the feedback.
Quote:
Originally Posted by delphipgmr
I develop for both, and i have my own apps in both.
dont waste your time with android.
biggest problem with the android store (IMO), is they have no iTunes equivalent.
come-on, when was the last time you used the appstore app on your iphone for anything serious. and the android store app on android phones is no where as good as the iphone app store app.
without a desktop itunes for android, its junk.
my best app sells $1000 +/- a month on the appstore, last month on android, it sold 4 units (made $2.80).
If anything, use your time to make an iPad version, even though the iPad sales are terrible, they are still 100X better than android.
man, why did you start this thread, i was in a good mood until i saw "android".....
total waste of time, after your app falls off the recently released, your pretty much hosed.
Yeah... forewarning I'm an Android hater, but I'm pretty sure a big chunk of Android users are just people who want a smartphone but don't care enough to switch to AT&T and probably don't care about apps either. The other chunk are tech geeks that are more interested in hacking it themselves and/or pirating a bunch of free stuff. And the store just doesn't provide the cohesive experience of iTunes.
Oops, I mean...Android is a gold mine right now. If I were you I would totally dump iPhone development and go Droid.
I'm not looking to dump the iPhone, make android a priority or even divert any resources away from my iPhone development. I was interested in just hiring someone to do a quick port over just so I'll have a presence on the Android market just in case it ever takes off. There's no doubt the Android platform is starting to take off, it's just a matter of whether the Marketplace will too. To clarify, I'm still a huge iPhone supporter, it is my phone of choice, I hope iPhone goes over to Verizon and clobbers the Droid, but I'm also a businessman and if there's extra money to be made out there using what I already have, I want to try and make it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iphoneblahb
Oops, I mean...Android is a gold mine right now. If I were you I would totally dump iPhone development and go Droid.
I hope you weren't taking my reply to be mean-spirited. I've been considering porting to Android as well. Just a little sarcasm about eliminating the competition
For me, the research I've done has me just starting another iPhone project rather than Droiding my app. Droid userbase doesn't seem as app-energized as iPhone. But like I said, I really just don't like much about the Droid platform, devices, or marketing.
The real problem of the android market is that.. is not a market!
It's a kind of "I wanna have apps things cos the iPhone has...", but their userbase are either people not interested in apps or very hard core open source guys who want everything for free, give them gcc and your source code and they are happy. What paying for something? Are you barking mad?
I always measure the potential of a market not just in how many people there are in the market but in how many of those are potential customers.
The ratio iPhone/Android on that matter is simply embarrassing.
I've had two apps on the Android market for 4 weeks. I've made ~$50 a week. Sales declined a bit for one of the apps, Booze Runner, because Android doesn't wait for five reviews so I got a 4 star review, then a 1 star review which destroyed my average rating. I definitely noticed a slowdown in sales as a result.
It should be mentioned also, that I charge $2.99 for the apps on Android as opposed to $1.99 on the iPhone. I figure the smaller potential market would require a hire price. I'm thinking of lowering the price on Booze Runner to decrease the amount of refunds requested.
Which brings me to the biggest problem with the Android market. I don't have a problem with providing refunds, but I think 24 hours is quite a long time. I think people treat the purchase more like a rental. I'm only retaining 60-some percent of Booze Runner customers, compared to 90 percent from my other app, Drag Tree.
It's also interesting to note that the free version of Booze Runner on Android had more downloads in two days than the free version on iPhone did in nearly a month. The extra downloads didn't seem to convert to sales at anywhere near the rate that it appears they would have on iPhone.
The paid versions of the apps on the iPhone store sell anywhere from 2-3 times as well as the Android market.
I do think that the market has potential, but first, Google has to decide to give a rats patootie about it. Right now it seems like an after thought. Very little room for descriptions, no screenshots on phones stuck on 1.5, reviews don't reset on updates, very little polish at all compared to Apple.
I've heard that palms WebOS store is doing fairly well, but with the sale of Palm who knows how long that platform will be around.
I am really curious because I was thinking of moving some of my free apps to Android and putting ads in them. I want to know how well that performs.
While I personally haven't ported anything to Android I would think that an ad-supported app would pull in more money on the android market right now because (as mentioned earlier) Android users just don't seem to be willing to pay for apps.
Just my 2 cents... I hope someone can provide some hard data though would love to hear it.
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While I personally haven't ported anything to Android I would think that an ad-supported app would pull in more money on the android market right now because (as mentioned earlier) Android users just don't seem to be willing to pay for apps.
Just my 2 cents... I hope someone can provide some hard data though would love to hear it.
I was thinking of porting my game because it uses c++/opengl and should be easy to port. But then learning more about Android put me off:
1) there is no openal - making porting a bit more tricky
2) The licencing server puts dependancy on being connected to network.
3) fragmentation: dozens of devices on market, all with different characteristics and quirks
4) They charge you the transaction fee when customer returns app
5) No promotion codes
6) Very poor information about market (no equivilant to AppAnnie or good forums like this one)
I think if you are going to make your Droid app free, with ads, it should do pretty well. As we can see, Droid users dont like spending money, even 1 buck. If you have a good app, free+ad could work well.
I almost make no money from the Android platform either, compared to iPhone. What's more when you compare Xcode to the Eclipse junk I don't feel like playing much with that platform anymore...
I almost make no money from the Android platform either, compared to iPhone. What's more when you compare Xcode to the Eclipse junk I don't feel like playing much with that platform anymore...
Maybe it's the android emulator that's the junk. Eclipse is a pretty good IDE for pure java development.
What flame wars? There is no debate. You know that objective-c has almost none of the features of modern programming languages right? It's based on smalltalk which is ancient.
If you could code in Java with Cocoa APIs you would be 2-3x more productive.
What flame wars? There is no debate. You know that objective-c has almost none of the features of modern programming languages right? It's based on smalltalk which is ancient.
....
Objective-C++ is a superset of C++. You have all the features of very modern C++ (including templates, generic programming, etc. etc.). Nobody forces you to use only Objective-C in iPhone app development.
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Objective-C++ is a superset of C++. You have all the features of very modern C++ (including templates, generic programming, etc. etc.). Nobody forces you to use only Objective-C in iPhone app development.
Have you ever tried using Objective-C++? It's almost impossible to create a UIKit app in Objective-C++. But I would love to see someone prove me wrong on this.
In any case the original argument was Objective-C vs Java. I agree Objective-C has certain merits but from a productivity point of view (the most important metric for programming languages imo), it falls way short of Java.
Anyone making money off Android?
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