Monetizing on Google Play is Hard! Here's What it Looks Like

How much money is there on the App Store vs. Google Play? That's a question I hear often, and this week I found a very interesting case in the wild that can show you the difference.

Motionleap, an app that animates photos, made its way into the top 5 in the App Store last week. We've seen a few apps from this category rise to the top organically in the last few months, but a quick look at the downloads showed this was less viral and more paid user acquisition.

I say that after looking at the rate of the growth, how downloads were nearly parallel across both the App Store and Google Play, and the country distribution.

Knowing the app is getting a similar number of downloads across both stores and at roughly the same speed means we can look at how revenue is growing across the stores to see which store is stronger. After all, the app offers the same functionality across both platforms, and it's not exactly niche.

To answer the main question - The App Store is much, much, much bigger when it comes to revenue.

In terms of downloads, at the peak, our estimates show the App Store bringing in around 180K new downloads a day and Google Play around 200K. Not too far off. When it comes to revenue, however, our estimates show the App Store peaked at $40K of daily new net revenue while Google Play barely rose to $7K, less than a quarter.

So far in March, Google Play was responsible for about 19% of the total net revenue, which we estimate was a few dollars shy of a half million dollars.

This is, of course, just one app, but it tells the story of Apple vs. Google quite well.

I don't want you to take this as your reasoning for not building for Google Play, and we have to keep in mind this isn't revenue from Android but rather specifically from Google Play. Just keep these figures in mind as you make your decisions.

And, read on for more examples from the game side of things.