Android Piracy is “Unbelievably high”. Developers maintain that profits are higher on iOS

Gizmodo and The Verge had a couple posts that started an online conversation about Android piracy. Being able to side load apps, even on the device directly from an online source, has made piracy not only easy, but “unbelievably high”.

The original article on The Verge was about a new game called Dead Trigger, which is a zombie first person shooter game being made available on Android. The game comes from the makers of Shadowgun.

The developers have had experience in the market, and claimed that:

Even at $0.99, the piracy rate on Android devices was “unbelievably high.”

The developers decided to launch an app that would be available for free on Android for all users to play, and would cost $0.99 on iOS. Of course there are in-app purchases on both platforms, but are the iOS users paying for Android user access?

Madfinger is careful to point out that Dead Trigger will not be a freemium app, and “all players are able to play without in-app purchases.”

The app profits on iOS are simply far greater than Android. The problem is clearly a platform issue, not a user issue.

This is not a chicken and egg problem. This is not about getting more users to the platform to encourage developers to come. This is a planting and harvesting problem. Google has planted the seeds to allow openness and freedom. Apple has planted the seeds to allow lock-in and security. Now we can look at the harvest each has yielded. Seems to turn out that ‘secure’ yields better profits than ‘open’.

Until Google plants seeds of security, and focuses on the developers, the profits will more easily come from the iOS platform. Developers aren’t building for iOS first because there are more users. They are developing for iOS first because the users seem to spend more on apps.

Source: The Verge