Many developers earning more from Amazon Appstore than Google's Market, claims Distimo

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Distimo Report February, 2012

Today app analytics firm Distimo released a report that highlights the successes of Amazon's Appstore in the world of Android applications. The report compares the Appstore's performance with the Google owned Android Market, and finds that the Appstore is actually generating more income for many developers than the Market and that it is growing faster.

To compare profitability, Distimo selected all the apps from each application store that generate over $200 per day in sales revenue. It then culled that list to just those that were available from both app stores, which left it with a group of 110 apps.

Of those 110 apps, 42 of them actually generated more sales dollars on the Amazon App store than on Google's Android Market.

Part of this is due to the fact that the Appstore not only contains a higher percentage of paid apps (65 percent compared to the market's falling 32 percent), but Amazon apps sales have also benefited greatly from the release of the Amazon Kindle Fire. Since the launch of the Fire, the top 100 applications in the Amazon Appstore are now downloaded 14 times more often in December of 2011 than they were two months earlier.

It's amazing what 3.9 million Kindle Fires can do.

Distimo also says that the Appstore's growth is outpacing that of the Android Market. The Market, with its 370k U.S. available applications still dwarfs the Appstore's 27k, but Amazon has been catching up to Google when it comes to new applications becoming available. In September of 2011, the Google Android Market added 22 times more new apps than the Appstore. In contrast, the Android Market's number of new applications exceeded the Appstore's by only a factor of 4.7 in January of 2012. While the Market is still growing faster, the Appstore is improving at a faster rate.

The sales model that each app store uses differs a bit, and that probably has something to do with the revenue each generates. For starters, the average price of paid applications in the Appstore is 40 percent lower than in the Android Market. Amazon plays a part in setting those prices, though it ensures a minimum royalty amount for developers. Google, on the other hand, supports in-app purchases, which is turning into a more solid revenue generation method for its apps than up-front purchase costs.

Another interesting statistic offered by Distimo includes the fact that fully 50 percent of the apps available in Amazon's Appstore are also available in the Android Market.

In the end it seems clear that the Amazon Appstore has turned into a success with not only consumers, who love the daily free paid apps that it offers, but also with developers who can earn more money there even though Amazon pushes app prices down significantly to make its store attractive to downloaders.