Applications, especially those run on smartphones, are increasingly inseparable from our lives. Most of our time is spent accessing these applications; the easiest examples are WhatsApp and Facebook. Supported with the Android and iOS operating systems, our lives are made easier by their presence, even when we want to play slots free with bonus or just check the weather in our city, for example. Speaking of applications, we cannot rule out game applications. Playing games is a manifestation of the way people obtain entertainment and therefore it forms attractive “application niches” to fight for.
It’s not a matter of today that Android or iOS operating systems is the best one among the users. And in the gaming industry, it couldn’t be any different. A new research has revealed that Android is expected to dominate the global gaming market by 2020, surpassing iOS.
Worldwide, Android already accounts for 85% of the smartphone market. But when we talk about games, iOS is still the most used. This logic, however, has been reversed. According to a report by Liftoff, a mobile app marketing and retargeting company, games are growing on Android.
The reason for the forecast is directly related to the cost to acquire users in each of the systems. According to research data, to buy a user of games on Android is spent $ 3.21, while on iOS, this amount is $ 4.85 – a difference of more than 50%.
These amounts are the result of the division between what was invested in marketing and sales of games, divided by the number of customers acquired by these actions. With this difference, investing in games for Android becomes more advantageous.
In addition to the technical differences, users of each system also exhibit different behaviors. Overall, audiences end up opting for the same types of games on Android and iOS, although downloads are higher on Android.
The number of downloads has been performing very well on both operating systems, but the success is higher on Android. Game downloads are divided into 75% Android and 25% iOS. This is mainly because the market is dominated by Android devices.
If in the world Google’s operating system represents 85% of the market. The games that end up with the most downloads on iOS (when compared to Android) are the heaviest ones. There are many, many more mid-end Android devices than mid-end iOS devices.
As a result, some heavier games end up being downloaded more from the App Store than from Google Play, as iOS users typically have high-end devices.
Another big difference in behavior is that iOS users often make far more in-app purchases (those made within the app to earn more lives or game items) than Android users.
According to Liftoff research, however, this difference has been narrowing. Compared to last year, the number of gamers making in-app purchases on iOS has dropped from 21% to 13.2% worldwide. On Android, this value is 9.5%.