"...At the last Quakecon I took a show of hands poll, and it was interesting to see how almost as many people there had an Android device as an iOS device. But when I asked how many peple had spent 20 bucks on a game in the Android store, there was a big difference. You’re just not making money in the Android space as you are in the iOS space."
Apple are very good at getting people to hand over their credit card details before they even intend to make an app store purchase. Then, when it comes to buying something via an Apple store it doesn't require filling in any annoying forms to make the payment.
On Android meanwhile, once you see something you want to buy you then have the tedious task of typing in numbers and for a trivial app many people will feel it's not worth the effort.
But...are there any $20+ games on the Android market? Are there any $20+ iPhone games, for that matter?
People will accept significantly higher prices for iPad games, because there's a different class of games that can be played on a tablet device. A phone's too small.
There's a bit of a catch-22 going on here in general, where Android users are spending less money on apps because there are fewer really good apps available. I'm one person who owns multiple devices. But I wind up spending lots of money on iOS because 1) there's plenty of good stuff, and 2) the app store is nicely designed to make me buy things.
The question he asked at Quakecon 2010 was actually "who has spent at least $20 on the Android app store?"[1], not just on a single game. Your catch-22 scenario still holds, though I think the quantity and quality of free apps in the Android app store has also raised the bar for pay apps.
Interesting