They estimated Android downloads to be 6.7 billion about 2 weeks before Google announced there had been 10 billion downloads. That isn't very accurate.
They explicitly compare their estimate of 6.5 billion Android downloads with 18.5 billion iOS downloads. Free downloads are included in both cases (but the Android estimate is way, way out)
(Edit: To make it doubly clear, I'm implying that their estimate of revenue share shouldn't be trusted either)
Yes, I read the article, I believe they stated that it was an estimate. Perhaps their estimation methods are conservative. Perhaps Apple provides better data than Google upon which to make estimates. Perhaps the timing of the data leads to more accurate estimates for Apple. You can't simply say that because one estimate was wrong that everything else shouldn't be trusted. (Well you can say it, but there's no logical basis that underpins the argument) Perhaps they estimated the downloads based on sales, who knows. A week before Google released their data the estimate was useful, now it isn't because we have better data, that's simply how life goes.
In the business of selling apps I'd much rather I went to market underestimating the size of the market than overestimating it. To me, one more download is one more client to support with no revenue upon which to service it. I guess if I developed for the Marketplace I could have 40% more freeloaders than anticipated. Awesome, just what I needed, more expenses and the same rev.
I'm not in the business of cheerleading mobile operating systems, I'm in the business of selling stuff. (To be fair, I do cheerlead Apple because people can't buy my stuff on Android, perhaps the market is changing and I'll have to adapt, but once my stuff is available on both platforms, I really wouldn't care what people use)
I'll be ecstatic when the marketplace is at a billion a year but I think that's a bit off at this point. App Store vs. Marketplace is like Google vs. Bing for traffic, if you're a huge site you'll see 15% of your traffic from bing, but if you're a smaller player you'll see 99% from Google. Likewise when doing SEO work I don't care about bing because it doesn't drive traffic for me like Google does. On the other hand I use Bing for SEM because it has cheaper CPCs with a better conversion rate.
Worse, it is an estimate of sales to date of the two markets. The Android market was seriously immature until around a year ago, and it has been exploding since (from a personal perspective, the number of apps worth buying has increased exponentially in the past couple of months). Most recent anecdotes seen on here and on other development boards have found similar current sales rates across Android and iOS. If I'm making an app now, it is meaningless that for three years iOS held a huge headstart.
There are a couple of platform zealot prats rambling on with their standard, dated anti-Android nonsense in here. It is disheartening that they haven't been carpet bombed into the hellban so many voices of reason end of enduring.
