[NewsPoster]

Google Play is vastly outpacing the iOS App Store in terms of downloads, but the latter is generating more revenue, according to analytics company App Annie. Google saw about 60 percent more downloads than Apple during 2014, but the App Store produced 70 percent more revenue. This includes both initial and in-app purchases.

The results continue to reinforce perceptions that Android users tend to be low-end or budget buyers who only download and use free apps, and resist "freemium" in-app purchases, while iOS users tend to be more affluent. The lop-sidedness of the results may also speak to why developers continue to generally prefer iOS exclusively or first, with Android versions of apps usually appearing much later.

Across both app platforms, Japan, South Korea, and the US generated more revenue than the rest of the world combined. The fastest growing regions, however, were Brazil, Russia, India, and China, which as a group more than doubled their revenue.

There are some gaps in the data. A number of third-party Android app stores have arisen for instance, such as Amazon and various options in China. The App Annie data also ignores platforms like Windows, though the mobile realm is easily dominated by Android and iOS.

[qazwart]

A lot of the downloads from GooglePlay are the APIs that Google has placed there and updates to many of Google's apps that are no longer part of the standard Android release. That could account for the high number of downloads, but the much smaller amount of revenue generated.

[bdmarsh]

qazwart: more free apps on Google Play as well, when the download ratio was around 1:1 between the two, apple's revenue percentage from the App Store was even higher. in 2013 when the ratio was closer to 1:1 the App Store was bringing in 130% more revenue (I found a few articles mentioning this amount from June/July 2013) in 2012 that was more like 400% more revenue. So Google Play is gaining in revenue at about an equal ratio to the amount of downloads increasing.

[I-ku-u]

"Google saw about 60 more downloads than Apple during 2014"

Sixty? Isn't that difference a drop in the bucket, or did you drop a unit/word somewhere, like percent or millions? (-:

[msuper69]

That's a lot of malware!

[coffeetime]

Sure, that includes massive background invisible apps downloading while you are asleep.... and awake.