People seem to miss the concept of "market power" vs sales numbers. Apple loyalists love to brag about the fact that Apple users spend something like 7x more on Apps and other services than Android users. They don't brag about that so much when anti-trust comes up - on a weighted basis that would suggest Apple has about 95% of market share and should be treated in the same category that late 1990's Microsoft was.
Serious question. Why is it though, despite forming over 40% of the smart phone market in the US, Android users only spends 5% of the money? It can’t simply be about control, otherwise Nokia or BlackBerry should’ve accomplished that in their hay day.
I'm guessing because outside the Apple ecosystem apps are primarily free.
Apple App Store is $99 annually + cost of owning a Mac, compared to a one time $25 Google Play Store (develop on PC or Mac, with the possibility to avoid the Play Store). More people own PCs (even within the developer community) so this leads to more apps in the PC and Android ecosystem. More competition, means lower prices.
I've also heard Apple is much more strict about what they allow on their App store, which further restricts supply and keeps prices high. I don't think this is an accident, Apple intentionally wants high prices on their platform, because it keeps the illusion alive that Apple devices are luxury devices and a status symbol.
There is no way that developer costs of $100/year + a $2k Mac is the reason why all the money gets spent on iOS.
“Keep prices high”. The top grossing iOS apps are all like $1-2. That is not high. In fact, from what I could tell on sensortower.com, apps from the same developers were priced identically between stores, and the average prices of Android top grossing apps were higher. Probably because of the LOW VOLUME, not related to overhead.
You’re trying hard to find reasons to blame Apple for an active marketplace. What exactly do you want to achieve?
The PlayStore on iOS? The free market doesn’t work. It’s a myth. I’d much rather pay $10 for a good app here or there than have a store full of “free” or $0.05 trash where it’s not worth anyone’s time to invest in building something good.
But if was to guess, I would say that Android users fall into two camps primarily. One is high end tech-savvy users who want it because it's more open, powerful and flexible. These people don't buy apps and services because they are "smart" and use their tech knowledge to solve the problems those things are solving cheaper ways (or for free).
Then there are a second group of Android users who simply buy it because it is cheaper, or they just have absolutely no interest / affinity for Apple's branding. These users aren't going to buy things because their primary motivation in the first place was to not spend excessive money on something they don't care about (or they just don't have the money).
I'd also suggest that perhaps the 7x is a bit exaggerated. It's just harder to account for the revenue from Android apps because it's more driven by off-market streams. But I totally believe iOS is much much more. It might just not be 7x.
