Following up on the earlier point about mobile developer focus, here's some information that shows that it is certainly possible to make some income from adverts on the Android marketplace. This developer has been actively developing and updating apps on Android and earning revenues from ads. The revenues have grown as follows:
- May: $4.92
- June - $138.87
- July - $538.26
- August - $920.00
- September - $1545.45
- October - $1059.31 (lower because no app updates that month)
- November - $1691.27
From one of the developer's earlier posts:
And I will say it again… I have not made a single cent from selling apps - all my income is only from ads.
So, as I mentioned earlier. If you can make money from ads (i.e., if your app is one which users will spend a lot of time on), then Android might make sense. If you need to make money from sales (e.g. a tax calculator app used a couple of times a month at most), then iOS wins without contest. It all depends on what kind of product you're building.
Of course, the next question is, "can you build a $100m startup from either model?" History tells us that selling your software and selling your users are both very profitable models.
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