Android Not The Place To Do Business For Paid Apps

A long standing assessment of the state of the various app stores has had it that the Android Market is not the place to do business if you have a paid app when compared with the Apple App Store. For example, some 80% or so of paid Android app have been downloaded fewer than 100 times. Android Community gives another example:


In the competitive gaming segment, only five titles in the Android Market have been downloaded more than 250,000 worldwide. In contrast, ten iPhone games in the App Store were downloaded in excess of 250,000 times in the US in the past two months alone.


There are various reasons why this is the case, not the least of which is the almost slapdash approach Android took to paid apps when it first launched. Different apps were billed in different currencies, for example, and there was no real uniform method of payment. Rather customers used a hodge podge of credit cards, network billing and other means.



A unified payment system, as Apple has through its iTunes system, would go a long way to helping devs see their paid apps gain more traction on Android.