iPhone Owners Still Buy More Apps

Chance Miller at 9to5 Mac reports app sales on iOS are currently earning 75% more revenue than Google’s Play Store. For years I’ve noticed that Android owners simply don’t buy applications. Ask your Android-wielding friends to show you their phone and you’ll find a lot of free stuff and little, if anything, that they actually paid for.

Subconsciously, I’d assumed that had changed over the last few years as the Android phones have become higher-quality but apparently it has not. App Annie, the analytics company that supplied the data for the above article says they track more than 1 million applications and iOS revenue is still eclipsing that in the Google Play Store.

I don’t think it is as simple as Android owners are cheaper than iPhone owners. I think it’s more about the fact that iPhone owners (or at least a significant segment of them) are choosy about their software and more likely to pay for it. An addition point in favor of Apple is that people are also quite used up giving money to Apple for iTunes and generally trust the system. This makes it a lot easier to buy games and the inevitable in-app purchase that come with games, which the above-cited article explains earned $1 billion in revenue in December.