iOS vs Android Part 2: iOS is making money hand over fist

With Android taking the crown for market share, let's take a look at the numbers from Tech Time's compilation for the apps on both devices, along with which operating system makes more money.

The first question is which company makes the most amount of money from selling smartphones. According to Canaccord Genuity, Apple is far ahead in the race with 72 percent of the profit in the last quarter of 2012. Samsung is second with 29 percent. All the other companies either broke even or lost money, which resulted in Apple and Samsung's numbers accounting for more than 100 percent.

Another major source of arguments with regards to both operating systems is the apps. Numbers-wise, there's no winner, since both Android and iOS have more than 800,000 third party apps. Quality-wise, however, when it comes to quality of apps, uTest's Applause service shows that iOS apps are generally given a higher rating at 68.5 percent, compared to 63.3 percent for Android apps.

When it comes to money, iOS reigns supreme

App downloads is an area where Android comes up ahead with Canalys' numbers showing that 51 percent of the apps downloaded in the first quarter of this year were for Android. iOS was second at 41 percent and other OSes constituted 9 percent. Be that as it may, data also shows that iOS users spend more money on apps than Android users. Seventy four percent of the money spent on apps for the first quarter of this year was for iOS apps, with Android coming in a distant second at 20 percent and other OSes scoring 6 percent.

According to NetMarketShare's monthly stats on which browsers and operating systems are being used on the Internet, iOS is far ahead of Android. According to the numbers from March 2013, 61.4 percent of the devices browsing the web were running on iOS. Android was second with 24.9 percent and other OSes were at 13.7 percent.

On the other hand, numbers from StatCounter say completely different things. According to StatCounter, Android leads in net usage with 37.2 percent, followed by iOS with 27.1 percent and other OSes scoring 35.6 percent.

The most widely used platform in businesses, according to Citrix's report from the fourth quarter of 2012, is iOS with 62 percent of the share. Android is a distant second with 35 percent of the share and other OSes score 3 percent.

Going by the numbers, Apple seems to be the winner here. Despite Android having just as large of an app library as iOS, the latter's apps are generally found to be rated higher than the former. iOS also manages to make much more money than Android, in part because of Apple's tremendous profit margin from selling iOS devices, and in part because iOS users seem to be more likely to spend money on apps than Android users.