By Maggie Hui, posted Mar 8, 2012 at 7:41 AM, 1,982 views,

Chinese App Developers Earn 18 Times More Profit From Apple Than Android

The are about 750,000 Android app developers in China while the number of Apple’s app developers stands at 140,000. Although the number of Android app developers in China is much more than Apple, the Chinese developers are earning more profits from the Apple platform. Chinese developers have earned US$48 million for developing and outsourcing for Apple, 18 times more compare to Android platform. There are 60 percent of Apple app developers are making money in China, but the same percentage of Android developers are losing money or just able to break-even …

Apple’s App store has created the economic phenomenon being called the “app economy.” More than 248,000 developers from different countries have created 550,000 apps for 315 million iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users around the world since the App Store was founded in 2008. And Apple has recently announced that 25 billion apps have been downloaded worldwide. One of the Chinese app developer believes that Apple’s App Store still has a lot of potential since shipments of the Apple’s products will continue to increase and he expects those iOS apps will be integrated into different sorts of life.

The reason for Chinese app developers earning more money from Apple’s platform than Android is because Apple’s products have provided an excellent user experience and only have a single architecture that makes developers feel easier to create apps for them. Unlike Android-based smartphone, it has a wide range of specifications and screen sizes which developers need to spend more time to create apps for them. Moreover, users of Apple products are tend to be wealthy and more willing to pay for apps than users of Android products.

Despite the statistics shown, there are still some developers shifted the focus from Apple’s App store to the Android Market (Google Play). An owner of a Chinese games website said many app developers earned lot’s of money from Apple during 2009 and 2010, but their businesses are not that profitable recently. Since there are too many similar apps on itune now, to generate more income could become more difficult.

SOURCE: First Finacial Daily (Chinese translated)