Android Market has good potential on Making Money

There’s a great post at Techneur on 10 Things I’ve Learned About the Android Market that mentions more things that I didn’t cover in my previous post.

It’s interesting it’s said that…

"People ARE paying for apps. I saw wallpaper apps that had hundreds of sales at $1. When I saw this, I knew that Android users would pay for something that provided utility. Our first upload is at almost 100 sales within it’s first month at $1.99."

Unfortunately 100 x $1.99 doesn’t even cover time doing tech support never mind thinking how long it will take to recoup the development costs. It’s a similar situation with my Android Database app that has only sold one or two per day since March. Meanwhile, my freeware titles have just gone over 150,000 downloads.

On Mike Rowehl covers has similar topic when he questions the ability to make money off Android applications. He thinks it’s about "consumer disposition". iPhone customers have a strong desire for an iPhone while Android customers "just try to get a good phone that isn’t an iPhone".

I personally think it’s a combination of…

iPhone users mostly are more money (it’s a self selecting premium market)
The iTunes store makes it easy to buy apps
The Android Market makes it more difficult to buy apps (discovery and payment)
I think the Android Market will eventually become a market of primarily advert-funded and freemium based apps. While I don’t think there was any premeditated intention, advert-funded apps obviously suit Google very well.