In regards to the previous comment, I think it is unfair to blame Google for having failed to recreate the Apple app market. Google never tried to recreate the same thing.

Apple has built an ecosystem where the user is used to paying. The whole Apple world is a “premium” thing. People who are ready to pay go for iPhones, so of course they are more ready to buy apps. On the other hand, Android is open source and has a totally different philosophy and its primary adopters are used to the web/open source ecosystem, where most services are given for free to the community .

So up until now, there has been a natural selection both among the developers and the audiences of the platforms. No wonder the cross-platform apps are rare. When iPhones and Android phones get more or less equivalent in the general public’s mind, the revenue discrepancy on marketplaces will tend to decrease.

In regards to the previous comment, I think it is unfair to blame Google for having failed to recreate the Apple app market. Google never tried to recreate the same thing.

Apple has built an ecosystem where the user is used to paying. The whole Apple world is a “premium” thing. People who are ready to pay go for iPhones, so of course they are more ready to buy apps. On the other hand, Android is open source and has a totally different philosophy and its primary adopters are used to the web/open source ecosystem, where most services are given for free to the community.

So up until now, there has been a natural selection both among the developers and the audiences of the platforms. No wonder the cross-platform apps are rare. When iPhones and Android phones get more or less equivalent in the general public’s mind, the revenue discrepancy on marketplaces will tend to decrease.

The one critical fact for iPhone developers who are considering moving an app to Android is buried in the middle of your post. This is that the typical revenue for a paid app that is equally ranked in both stores is 50 times higher in the iPhone app store than on Android. From other sources I have heard the ratio is usually 100 to 1.

Therefore, until Google gets serious about promoting paid apps and making payment easy and available around the world, there is simply no incentive for a developer to put a paid app on Android. The true revolution of the iPhone App Store was that Apple created an entirely new outlet for independent developers, but Google has failed miserably to replicate this.