Despite the high sales of Android smartphones, as well as the rapid growth of downloads, the share of applications for this platform, compared to iOS, is falling from quarter to quarter.
For every Android app, there are three iOS apps. Moreover, the ratio in favor of Apple’s mobile platform, compared with previous quarters, is only increasing. For example, if at the beginning of the year 37% of the total 100% share of new applications from iOS were released under Android, then by the end of the year their share had fallen to 27%.
Such figures raise questions, since sales of Android-based devices are only growing, the market is expanding. According to the latest data, the number of activated Android devices has crossed the 200 million mark. This is only 50 million less than the number of iOS devices sold.
According to Inside Mobile Apps journalists, the reason for the decline in Android popularity among developers is poor monetization. Where an iOS developer gets a dollar on micropayments, the average Android developer gets 24 cents. However, the journalists did not rule out that in the case of Android, Flurry analysts did not take into account the income received by developers through in-game advertising.
In turn, journalists attribute Apple’s success to the fact that the company has rigidly tied each of its gadgets to the user’s account, on which all payment information is stored. This strategy has helped the company to collect at least 225 million accounts, almost every one of which is directly linked to a credit card.