Android apps are 2.5-times more expensive than iOS? Not so fast
22.05.12
A new analysis of app prices from market research firm Canalys calls out Android apps as being 2.5-times more expensive than iOS apps on average. By gathering the current costs of all the top 100 apps on both platforms, Canalys felt confident enough to decree Android users are paying “dramatically higher” prices for apps. However, a brief look at Canalys’ methods paints a different picture — one of spin and misinterpretation.
On the face of it, the numbers are jarring enough to set an Android acolyte’s teeth on edge. The average price of Android apps in the survey was a whopping $3.74 among the top 100, but just $1.47 for iOS. When the analysis was limited to just the top 20 app on each platform, the difference reported by Canalys was even more stark; $4.09 average for Android, and $1.04 on iOS.
Digging just a little bit makes it clear what Canalys is doing; they’re using bad statistics to come to an invalid conclusion. The question to be answered here is, “what price are you likely to pay for an app on each platform?” In statistics, we call this the central tendency, and if that is indeed what you want to know, using the mean (or average) is the worst way to do so for this data set. Calculations of averages are least accurate among small data sets with high variability, for example outliers.
Source: ExtremeTech