There are no flawless victories in mobile. An SEO Analyst and fan of Windows Phone 7 has published some numbers comparing sales of an app on Android and WP7 to see which platform may be a better place for free apps. The app was called Mortal Kombat Tactics and is a guide to the game (not an actual game itself). While Windows Phone performed much better during the first five days of availability with 12,331 impressions compared to Android’s 3,684 impressions, the sad fact is that his ad revenue was only $14.77 on Windows Phone (Microsoft PubCenter) and $1.27 on Android (Google Admob).
Android:
- Day 1: 1,866 Impressions / $0.57 Revenue
- Day 2: 497 Impressions / $0.27 Revenue
- Day 3: 521 Impressions / $0.05 Revenue
- Day 4: 496 Impressions / $0.25 Revenue
- Day 5: 304 Impressions / $0.13 Revenue
- Total: 3,684 Impressions / $1.27 in Revenue
Windows Phone 7:
- Day 1: 2,070 Impressions / $1.28 Revenue (already surpassed Android’s 5 days)
- Day 2: 1,903 Impressions / $2.52 Revenue
- Day 3: 2,391 Impressions / $4.63 Revenue
- Day 4: 3,693 Impressions / $3.86 Revenue
- Day 5: 2,274 Impressions / $2.48 Revenue
- Total: 12,331 Impressions / $14.77 Revenue
Launching on two major smartphone platforms that make up about 50 percent of the market, a Mortal Kombat app was only able to garner 16,015 impressions. There are multiple reasons why these numbers may be low. Guides are not in the games section of the Android Market and likely don’t appear in the Windows Phone Marketplace games category either. Maybe there are too many apps and even a name like Mortal Kombat Tactics can fall by the wayside. Perhaps a lot of apps launch weakly and make up sales in the long term. Or maybe this guide just isn’t very good or can’t compete with other guides effectively. On the Android Market, other Mortal Kombat game guides seem to be performing better with hundreds of thousands of installations. Also, we have to wonder why the test wasn’t performed on Apple’s AppStore.
It’s always been difficult to help people find products on digital stores, especially when those stores are limited to the small screen of a cell phone. The 30,000+ apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace and 300,000+ apps in the Android Market are good numbers, but discovery is everything. There’s plenty of work Google, Microsoft, and Apple must do to make their immense libraries more accessible.
