the droid goes shopping
so the android market has been open a few days more or less in different places. wanted to share a bit of a seller perspective who now has apps on both market places.
1. market size – the android market is tiny (like a mac mini) – we here estimate between 600K and 1.5 mil activated handsets (worldwide?). in all the apps I have released I have about quarter million downloads (well 245,977 as of this morning to be exact) with most of that from one app – thats good in one sense that is a substantial market share of g1, but thats nothing compared to what we have in iPhone downloads.
2. Micro-payment – yes google account checkout is do-able, but users with iTunes have years of education and trust, plus most users who are willing to buy online have bought through iTunes aready – the transition to mobile had a very hight adoption.
3. 24 hour return policy – great for consumers, bad for developers. The iPhone apps have been such a success because developers can turn our stupid sh*t and people just buy it and go – oh this is stupid, but what the hell it was only 99 cents – here I am seeing about a 40% return rate – yeah the apps I am setting are silly little thing just to test the market with
4. Small app storage size – realistically a user has about 16MB of storage space for what I like to call “electables” – these are the apps the are just for fun – the rest of the are your necessary apps and one or two that you need to have for work, etc. Yes you can get a user to use the SD card to increase performance here – but this means users are having to delete apps all the time to make way for new ones. Savvy users know don’t keep stuff you don’t want.
5. 24 Hour return policy – so back to this point – small apps storage space with this policy is basically the perfect storm.
6. Developer marketing – yes there is an instant approval process, but you cant managing your pricing to drive adoption into a revenue stream. For pricing you can go from paid to free but not back again.
7. No desktop Web interface or client – the iTunes works because there is an iTunes app – when even a fella such as myself resorts to browsing apps via sites like http://www.cyrket.com/ — there are problems.
All said – I like android because I am a java geek (android is not real java btw – its harmony – http://harmony.apache.org/) , but if you are looking to make money as just a part-time developer – stick to the iPhone.
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