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Benedict Evans

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Google’s numbers show iOS generates 4x more average revenue per user than Android

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It’s long been known that iOS users are more profitable for developers than Android users, but figures released by Google at the Google I/O conference and crunched by Benedict Evans provide some hard data on just how big that gap is.

Google Android users in total are spending around half as much on apps on more than twice the user base, and hence app ARPU on Android is roughly a quarter of iOS.

The key reason, of course, is that Apple makes only high-end devices that attract people with a decent amount of disposable income, while Android spans everything from cheap-and-cheerful devices offered exclusively in developing countries all the way through to high-end phones like the Galaxy S5 and HTC One (M8).

Evans makes the point that we don’t actually have any data on the app and media spend of owners of premium Android handsets, and that may actually be similar to iOS users – but given that they represent a tiny minority of Android users, it’s a stat that would be interesting but not terribly relevant.