The State of the Android Market

Android, with its services on phones and tablets, is a pretty good market to be in right now. In May 2011, Google announced that there had been 3 billion applications downloaded from the Android Market. Just a few months prior to that, there were approximately 30,000 free and paid applications available to Android users. This number grew to 30,000 from 16,000 in exactly three months. By the time that this book is published, I am sure that the Android Market will have over 100,000 applications, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that growth is even faster than anticipated.

Dividing the March figure of 3 billion applications downloaded by the figure of 30,000 available applications, it means that every Android application, on average, has had 100,000 downloads.

Sure, that last number looks pretty good, but it is just a statistic. There is no guarantee that your brand-new Android application will have that number. Also keep in mind that a lot of these applications are free, which is helpful in achieving the greater-than-average number of downloads. I will detail in this book later how to have a free application and still make profits, but you should know that there is a paid download for every 100 downloads, and some say that figure is as high as 1,000 to 1.

As an example, Angry Birds, by Rovio, is free for Android users, and it is a mobile game giant that has produced massive funds for the company. The mobile game had over 2 million Android downloads in the three days after its Android release, and 7 million Android downloads one month after that. These stats are over a year old, and Rovio, the game’s developers, are still finding ways to make money on the Angry Birds franchise with spin-off applications, merchandise, and more.

You will soon discover that the massive amount of Android applications on the market can work against the developer, as the Android Market is flooded with applications of all types. This means that one application, as great as it might be, can get lost in the crowd and become very difficult to be noticed by its intended audience. If a developer markets their application so it gets a lot of publicity, Android users might pay to download one type of application, even though a similar version with more features is readily available for free.

Go to the Android Market on a web browser. You will see a slideshow that you can browse through on your Android’s device touchscreen or your browser (see Figure 1-1). You will also see a list of featured apps. On the web version, you’ll see the following lists of apps as well: Top Paid, Top Free, Top Grossing, Top New Paid, and Top New Free. Yes, you can probably make more from your app if you are on these lists, as your app will be easier to find by random Android users. However, there are ways of making money from your app even if you are not on anyone’s Featured list.

Figure 1-1. A quick peek at the Android Market, from a web browser. Note the Featured section, the Top Paid list, and the slideshow of application ads.

Before we can start talking about how to make money with Android, let’s talk about some Android basics.