Which mobile app stores are most lucrative for developers?

Vincent Hoogsteder is CEO and cofounder of app store analytics company Distimo.

There are currently over 30 mobile app stores and this number continues to grow. The latest addition is Amazon, as it aims to bring applications to the Kindle via its store. Distimo tracks all of these stores on a daily basis and we decided to sit down with three developers* who have day-to-day experience in monetizing content to talk about their experiences.

Following our discussions with them, we ranked the five largest manufacturer stores (Apple App Store, Google Android Market, BlackBerry App World, Nokia Ovi Store and Windows Marketplace for Mobile) across four categories. The ranking is based on several criteria that are important for developers who are looking to monetize their apps.

Here’s how each app store ranks by category:

Sheer Volume

1. Apple App Store: Largest consumer reach that actively downloads and purchases apps worldwide.

2. Android Market: Showing a strong growth trajectory with app downloads due to device adoption and growing country support.

3. Nokia Ovi Store: Started off slowly but is demonstrating very strong growth, thanks to Nokia’s market share.

4. (Tie) BlackBerry App World: Still limited since App World is not pre-installed on all new devices. Windows Marketplace: Has been slower in gaining traction, however still offers great promise due to large base of installed customers and continuous improvements to the store.

Billing

1. Apple App Store: Hassle-free purchasing with a large reach of existing iTunes users who have a credit card linked to their account.

2. (Tie) Nokia Ovi Store & Windows Marketplace: Both are quickly rolling out carrier billing, most recently with AT&T.

3. Android Market: Expected to gain traction with additional carrier billing integration this year and more country support for paid apps.

4. BlackBerry App World: Billing is limited to PayPal, so consumers need to take an extra step before purchasing an app. Carrier billing is reportedly coming later this year.

Customer Reviews

1. BlackBerry App World: Offers developers the ability to flag customer reviews for admin review by RIM, which helps to bring up the quality of reviews.

2. Android Market: Customers can mark reviews as spam, which brings up the quality as well.

3. Apple App Store: Customer review process is skewed towards negative reviews as users are asked for a review after deleting an app.

4. (Tie) Nokia Ovi Store: Allows customers to review an application that they have not installed themselves. Windows Marketplace does not display the application version that a customer is reviewing, which means that reviews can include issues that have already been resolved.

Driving traffic to your applications

1. Apple App Store: The friendly iTunes URLs let you drive both web and mobile traffic to your apps. The recent addition of iTunes Preview also takes away the need for a user to have iTunes installed on their PC to view the details of an app.

2. BlackBerry App World: Good web storefront with unique URLs for each app. Consumers can also recommend applications via a selection of social networks.

3. Nokia Ovi Store: consumers can recommend applications via SMS, but the apps are very device specific, which requires you to divide traffic you want to send to your apps per specific device.

4. (Tie) Google Android Market: There is no web storefront and no way to drive your own web traffic to your apps. The Windows Marketplace web storefront has different application URLs per country, which requires you to drive traffic on an individual country basis.

Summary

Out of these top four criteria, the Apple App Store comes in first in three categories. It is important to note, however, that the other stores are catching up fast. The introduction of carrier billing is on the rise, and this means that Apple’s biggest competitive advantage on the billing side is decreasing. The leading manufacturer stores are in fact all heading in the same direction: increasing consumer reach with new devices and simplifying their billing processes.

Who will be the winner in the end? In our view, this mainly depends on the content that a store offers to consumers. A store that performs well on the criteria above will attract successful developers who have the type of content consumers want.

Judging from the rankings above, we don’t believe a sinlge app store will arise as the clear winner over the next few years. Instead, we believe there will be a selection of stores competing heavily for developers and also continuously seeking to improve their offerings on both the consumer and the developer side. Every month we see an increasing number of developers offering their apps in multiple stores. Just as there is room in the market for multiple mobile platforms, there is also room for way more than one store.

*Note: The developers we spoke to were Cassidy Lackey (VP Mobile App Studios, Handmark), Jan-Joost Rueb (CEO and co-Founder, eBuddy) and Michael Breidenbruecker (Founder, Reality Jockey) to share their views on the biggest advantages and hurdles for monetizing apps in each store.

Handmark has 190 apps available in the Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World, Google Android Market, Nokia Ovi Store and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. eBuddy offers a free instant messaging application on Apple App Store, Android Market and Nokia Ovi Store. They also offer a paid premium app, eBuddy Pro, on the Apple App Store. RjDj has one free and three paid apps with in-app purchasing available in the Apple App Store.

Distimo is an app store analytics company based in The Netherlands. Distimo Report provides in-depth reports for companies interested in the mobile application ecosystem with insight into important trends happening within application stores. Distimo Monitor is a free analytics tool mobile developers can use to monitor their own and competitive applications across all app stores.