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The iOS platform isn’t the only way to make money on the mobile apps scene.
Tech news site Electricpig took a look at 8 groups that have made it big — over 6-digits big — with hit Android apps.
For example, Better Android Apps has made approximately $1.34 million from purchases of their hits Better Keyboard and Open Home. Yongzh created emulators for the PlayStation, Sega, Nintendo, and Atari systems, and gathered about $1.81 million from sales of these apps.
“Conventional wisdom told us that to be successful, we had to focus on iOS. Conventional wisdom was wrong,” said Gary Gattis, CEO of Spacetime Studios.
That certainly seems to be true with the tower defense game Robo Defense. It has also been a big winner, netting creator Lupis Labs more than $2.09 million.
An estimated 3.7 billion Android apps have been downloaded to date, according to AndroLib. Many developers wish that number would rise at a faster rate and are counting on tools like in-app payments to spur app purchases and developer earnings. However, that hasn’t stopped developers such as Eddie Kim, the creator of Car Locator, or almost anyone else on this list, from netting big profits.
These high sales figures illustrate that Android’s app market is finally coming into fruition as a solid distribution platform, where software programmers can make good money. Within months of the opening of Apple’s App Store in summer of 2008, a few lucky programmers quickly struck gold with hot sales of their apps. Android has been around for about the same time, and only now are we beginning to see comparably high sales figures for Android app makers. Though Google’s app market has been slower to mature, these success stories should give programmers more incentive to make killer apps for Android-powered tablets and smartphones.
Beautiful Widgets netted its maker LevelUp Studio over $934,000, and Halfbrick Studios (makers of Fruit Ninja) have netted over $242,000 after porting their iOS favorite to Android.
Other big winners, thanks to pop-up advertising, include Rovio, for (what else?) Angry Birds, and Arron La for Advanced Task Manager.
Spacetime Studios‘ Pocket Legends, a 3-D MMO, has managed to garner profits of $8,000 per day from in-app payments, making it a shoe-in for 6-figure earnings in the not-too-distant future.
“The Android platform has seen phenomenal growth, and it’s great that new avenues for app distribution are opening up,” said Mikael Hed, CEO of Rovio, in a recent press release.
The addition of new marketplaces like Amazon’s App Store are proof, showing that Google’s OS has the potential to be just as lucrative as Apple’s, and companies want to get in on the action.
Spacetime’s Gattis sums up the Android app scene pretty nicely: “In some ways, it’s kind of like the wild, wild West,” he says, “but that’s where the gold rush people made their claim.”
Image: Bad Piggy Bank (Rovio)
Meet The Android App Millionaires [Electricpig via Android Guys]
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