A different look at Android vs iOS
by Volker Weber
Interesting fact: Only 5% of Monument Valley installs on Android are paid for. 40% on iOS. There’s a sneak peak of data!
— ustwogames (@ustwogames) January 5, 2015On Android, the vast majority stole the game and installed it. It does not really matter, if Android is winning market share unit counts.
Comments
Only 40% on iOS is disgusting, too.
It is. Jailbreakers.
The devs sent out some more tweets about those numbers, some of them were a bit confusing. Don't know if that all got clarified by now. But because of those confusing initial tweets, there are actually already lenghty discussions on sites like Kotaku.com about how those numbers might come together. For instance if the developers simply take sales numbers and blindly hold them against "home pings" from the app installations, then they will get false positives, as some users may install their bought app on more than one device. On the other hand some people might revoke the networking rights for their apps after installation to protect their privacy. Those sales never result in a home ping. But yeah, despite any other explanations, it's a given that piracy especially on Android is pretty rampant.
Personally, I bought the game when it was on sale, as the initial price was a bit steep for my taste. I showed the game to my parents, who both bought it at full price and we also all bought the addon at full price, which is my first ever in-app purchase, I believe. :)
Also, I know that some people never go for the legal route and always get their apps through piracy sites. But given that a typical smart phone holds lots of personal data in a structured and easy to access way, I think it's even worse to pirate an app compared to pirating a PC software, in the context of safety of one's personal information. It's really easy to augment an Android app with additional functionality. A while ago, some security guy even posted a description of how he got a Keyboard app to log all the input and send it out to a server. Now image installing such an augmented version because you're too cheap to pay a lousy dollar for it and in return have your passwords, logins to Paypal etc. and your credit card information taken from you in return. Was it worth it?
It is surprising that piracy is that easy. I would have expected that only a minority of users would take the effort.
Torsten, Torsten... You messing up the clear narrative here with facts.
It's not fair to *assume* unpaid == pirated.
http://toucharcade.com/2014/11/19/monument-valley-is-free-for-android-users-on-the-amazon-app-store/
If 5% of Android equals 40% of iOS it still could be sustainable (assuming 40% is sustainable at all).
