> Most sources I find online show a big discrepancy between expected app revenue from the iOS and Android worlds, so developing a for-profit app on Android first seems a little iffy to me.

This is somewhat self-fulfilling. There are very few developers of paid apps that put equal time and effort into developing both on iOS and Android and release paid apps on both platforms (instead of freemium on one)[0].

Of those that do, many simply make one or the other (usually the Android one) either a simple web view shim, or a naive port of the app design from the opposite platform, which usually looks as bad as you'd expect it would.

So in the end, it's not surprising that some companies report dramatically better sales on iOS than on Android. It's not very straightforward to compare them, because they're essentially shipping two different products, one on each platform.

[0] I'm only talking about paid apps for which app revenue (including in-app purchases) is the primary business model. In other words, Facebook and Twitter would not count here, since they make their money off of advertising.

Now this I can agree with. It's basically impossible to truly compare the two platforms' all-around profitability. The 'right' answer for any particular enterprise is to do proper research and decide whether Android or iOS is a better market-fit for their product. All the same, it's hard to escape the reputations each platform has, and it's usually not sensible for an individual business to go against the grain just to level the playing field.

> All the same, it's hard to escape the reputations each platform has, and it's usually not sensible for an individual business to go against the grain just to level the playing field.

Quite the opposite. If it's true that Android users' reputation for being less willing to pay is undeserved (or overstated), then that means that the market is probably undersaturated. That means it would be to their advantage to target Android users.

In general, business stand to make more money where they can identify the markets that are being overlooked by others, not by competing in the same markets that others are already targeting.

  identify the markets that are being overlooked by others

That's what I meant about it being hard to escape reputations. The fact that so many other businesses are overlooking the market is part of what reenforces the status quo. Many businesses probably see challenging the status quo to be risky, since they don't know whether it's because of inherent properties of the market or because of a confounding factor.

10 years ago we were told not to write software for the huge Windows market because Mac owners buy software unlike those cheap PC users.

10 years later we keep getting told not to write software for the huge Android market because iPhone owners buy apps unlike those cheap Android users.

According to some, the Google Play store is now grossing more money than Apple’s App Store. But on a per-downloader basis, it looks like the average iOS user is way more likely to spend money on any particular app than an Android user. So if you’re after users who spend money, it seems like a no brainer.

But I have no idea if this same dynamic applied to the PC/Mac days.

Money per user seems an odd metric to optimize for in the software world where you can duplicate your product infinitely for free.

There are software sales situations when that makes sense, bespoke enterprise software etc. but not phone apos as far as I can tell.

I think it's important when you're trying to advertise your product. If there is a marginal cost for each set of eyeballs you can attract, then you'll probably want to start with the richest set of eyeballs.

Or you have non-trivial per-user costs: servers, bandwidth, support.

That's true, though to a large extent, the cost of those eyeballs is relative to the value of them. Android ads cost less because they convert less. So it's really about which platform has the highest ROI.

But aren't there almost double the number of Android user's out there than iOS users?

Any idea on how many of those are low end devices sold to users who just want a phone and have no interest in the play store?

I just get the feeling that looking at averages of the entire platform in this instance can be misleading as there are different types of users.

There are more than 5x as many Android users than iOS users.

Users? sure, customers?... probably not.

It probably did, but the scale was vastly different. Most metrics give iOS a 30-40% market share depending on how they count it, but there's no measure that give MacOS more than 15% at the most with around 5% being the most common 10 years ago.

The marketplace was also vastly different - when Apple was at its peak the market was physical, boxed copies had to be shipped to stores or via mail order. Now the respective stores give access to the entire market with one upload.

The other major differentiator is the number of users likely to download an app in the first place. Stats are very hard to get, but the general feel is iPhone users are much more likely to install apps, with a lot of Android users just buying the cheapest phone.

There's a lot of money in both markets though, so picking one is really a matter of where your company can ship first.

According to some the Earth is less than 6k years old, but that doesn't make them any less wrong, kind of like what you just said.

App Annie shows that of all revenue from paid app downloads, Apple accounts for 70% of it, which is up from 60% in 2014.

As a vendor do you care more about the number of people who use your product or how much money you're making?

Did anyone ever credibly suggest that developers should ignore the huge Windows market? About 12 years ago, Joel Spolsky was saying quite the opposite, that Windows was the only platform that mattered, given the failure of write once, run anywhere.

Credible(?) Gruber practically did: http://daringfireball.net/2002/09/on_joel_on_software

>> In fact, I think Spolsky is wrong about nearly everything in his article.

>> Let’s divide computer users into two groups — people who think computers are fun, and people who just happen to use a computer. Which group do you think buys more software (even including all the Linux nerds in the first group)? Which group do you think most Mac users are in?

>> Don’t get me wrong, the Windows software market is much larger than the Mac market, and there are millions more Windows nerds than Mac nerds — if you’re trying to sell into big corporations, write for Windows. I’m not even arguing anything silly, like that Mac users, on average, are smarter than their Windows counterparts. (Although I will link to this.) All I’m saying is this: amongst computer users who actually buy software, Mac users comprise a signficantly larger chunk than 4 percent. Significantly.

>> Mac users value attention to detail and intuitive, consistent, attractive interfaces. Developers who share these values would do well to create software for the Mac, where they are likely to be rewarded handsomely for their efforts. Developers who would prefer to program more features with less attention to detail should not.

Gruber was right. I don't think it's relevant to the handheld market. The non-hacker Android users I know are simply too cheap to buy iOS devices, so probably not a great target market if you want people to buy your app. And the hackers won't pay for anything they think they can write it themselves.

(There are some non-hacker persons who buy Android on software freedom principles, but it's a very small crowd.)