[hyung]

I've been a developer for iPhone/Android for a couple years now. Making livable money on iPhone, just barely breaking even, if not losing money, on Android.

- Your best shot at Android is to make an app that doesn't push the hardware. We built a high-end game, but we couldn't afford to keep supporting the latest devices. In fact, our game crashes hard on the Xoom/Gingerbread, but it's not making enough money to justify a fix. Fragmentation is a huge problem on Android, so for indie devs, staying low-end is the only real alternative.

- Our games have been featured by both Apple and Android, and been in both top selling lists. Our Apple revenue was easily 50x our Android revenue.

- I think you'll have better luck from a free, ad-supported app instead of a paid app on Android.

- If you want to make livable money, then your options are: (1) get as iOS app featured by Apple, or in the top 200 apps for a long time, or (2) create a stable of smaller apps that work well on all iOS/Android and don't need to be ported/tested on each individual device.

[Pewpewarrows]

As you said, with Android the market basically dictates a free, ad-supported version coupled with a paid, ad-free version. Trying to go paid-only in a climate of apps running on an OS that both place emphasis on "open" and "free" is suicide.

[cageface]

Interesting. Most of the apps I'm excited to build for tablets are graphics & sound-intensive, which is why I've stuck to iOS so far. If I get some good ideas for something less hardware-intensive maybe I'll try something on Android.

Getting into the top 200 seems tough.