Developer figures seem to show Google's app store isn't a big money-spinner yet.
A pair of independent developers have been talking about how much money they're making on Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market respectively - and the latter suffers from the comparison.
TapTapTap, which makes iPhone app Convert, says that when it was the second best-selling application on Apple's store, it was selling around 9,000 downloads a day. At $0.99 a download, after Apple took its cut, TapTapTap was making $6,300 a day.
Compare that to Android, though. Games developer Larva Labs says its games RetroDefense and Battle for Mars, which reached numbers one and 12 in the paid chart respectively on Android Market, have been making an average of only $62.39 a day.
Which, at $4.99 a pop, means only 12.5 sales a day. The developer points out that puzzle title Trism, which famously made more than $250,000 for its developer in two months on iPhone, has sold less than 500 copies on Android.
Larva Labs blames Android Market's lack of screenshots, 325-character limit on app descriptions, requirement that people use Google Checkout to pay for apps, various technical gremlins, and the fact that paid apps are hard to find on the store.
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There's no doubt that Android as a smartphone platform is set to grow hugely in the next year, as more handsets come out. However, if developers' concerns about Android Market aren't acted on, this growth may not translate into revenues for app-makers.
