Last year at Kumulos (Backend as a Service) we took a look at how the two giants of the Mobile industry, Apple and Android, compared to each other. At the time the iPhone 5 hadn’t been released, Samsung hadn’t posted incredible gains in the market, the Nexus line wasn’t available outside of the Galaxy Nexus and Apple maps-gate was yet to take place.
But all of these things have happened or changed and it’s definitely reset how to lay of the land looks. So we thought that it would be worth taking a short look at just where things actually lie now, a few months on. And it IS only a few months, but in the mobile world that may as well be a decade for all that can change in that time. A slow moving industry it is not.
Market Share
We started off by looking at market share. At the time it had been well and truly confirmed that iOS and Android were in a two horse race, holding 88% of the market between them. That share has increased to 92% as other OS like Blackberry and Symbian disappearing fast as 2012 moved on. Windows Phone 8 managed to make small inroads but nothing that could make a major difference.
As for individual market share, Android has become the clear winner in pure numbers sake. Android has recently been reported to hold roughly 70% of the global market share, with Apple left to pick up whatever’s left at 22%.
As we said the last time, these numbers are misleading as despite the massive market share, Android is still fragmented and spread across a number of different manufacturers, with Samsung being the only major market force in the Android corner. Apple may only have 22% market share, but they’re taking in some 79% of the profits from smartphone sales.
So things may have changed, but they also have remained mostly the same. Android is winning with pure handset numbers, but iPhones are still printing more money than many small countries’ GDP for Apple.
App Markets
The App Store is still leading Google Play, with four times as much profit coming back and ten percent more downloads, but according to recent figures that lead is diminishing rapidly.
Google Play has been growing at a truly ridiculous rate, with an over 300% increase in revenue income over the last year and an average increase per month of around 15%. Compared to that, the App Store only increased its revenue by 12.7% over the last year and was seen to be marginally shrinking on a month-to-month basis.
Google Play also just recently posted their 700,000th app available for download, putting them on par with the App Store in terms of availability and also, with 25 billion downloads, catching the Apple behemoth in terms of popularity.
Again though, numbers are not everything, and it’s important to remember that whilst Google Play is growing fast and has just as many apps, the App Store is still a lot more profitable and also contains many more high quality apps due to Apple’s strict app screening process.
App Developers
App developers are still sitting on the iOS side of the fence, mainly due to the aforementioned profitability of the App Store.
The app development sector is a business like any other, and good business people go where the money is, so it’s no surprise that iOS is still winning this sector. Android is gaining in this area though, by providing developers freedom to not only design their app as they’d like but also letting the developer charge customers how they’d like instead of limiting the options, Android’s app market is becoming a place for high quality freemium and subscription based payment models.
There has also been speculation that as Google seems to be taking more and more of an active role in the quality and control over their products (i.e. the Nexus line), they may make moves to start to control the Google Play store more to vet much of the existing bloatware that floats in the Play store.
Final thoughts
2012 was a very strong year for Android, with sales, market share and profit all going up across the board. Samsung grew from being a major Android manufacturer to being the Android mobile device maker, so much so that they alone beat Apple for handset market share.
And despite posting record numbers of sales, ridiculous profits and steady growth, Apple’s stock has fallen slowly but steadily since Q2 2012. There is speculation as to why that is, most of it pointing to a seeming lack of innovation in the last generation of devices that has investors worried over a potential stagnation in the Cupertino halls.
At Kumulos (BaaS), we’re inclined to say that this not the case, and that 2013 may become Apple’s year. After all, the death of Steve Jobs and the transition of power in the company was always going to create hiccups and down period as everything adjusted to the new way of working.
Time will tell what happens though, and you can count on Kumulos (Backend as a Service) to always have our finger on the pulse of the mobile world.
But if you’re an app developer, regardless which side of the camp you fall into, or indeed if you work cross platform, we at Kumulos want to help you make the best app you can and our Mobile Backend as a Service is designed to make creating a Mobile Backed for you app ridiculously easy and quick. So if you’re looking for an mBaaS solution that wants you the developer to succeed, look for further than Kumulos and sign up today!
