App developers still favor iOS despite Android's lead in marketshare

Earlier on Tuesday, we told you that Android models still own a majority of the market share for U.S. smartphones with a 53% slice of the pie. Right behind the green robot is iOS with a 29% marketshare. Based on stats like that, you might think that app developers would prefer to write for the green robot as the lead in marketshare could translate into more sales and therefore more money for the developers. But based on a survey done by Flurry Analytics, developers still select the iOS platform as their favorite.

Flurry's research reveals that 75% of new mobile app projects using Flurry's Analytics software used the iOS version of it during Q3 of this year. That is up from 63% of new mobile apps that used the iOS version of Flurry's software earlier this year. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt recently said that developers would favor Android in 2012 because of its lead in marketshare, but that doesn't seem to be the case so far.

Money might play a large part in this favoritism toward iOS. Flurry's metrics show that more money is spent on the iOS platform than on Android. For example, for every $1.00 that an app brings in on iOS, it generates just 24 cents on Android. Some of the reason for this is the easier payment method that is found on the App Store although Android is working on closing the gap using Google Wallet.

source: Flurry