Why is Android still not a great marketplace for paid application?

Though as a rule, I prefer not to answer questions the asker has already made up his or her mind about, I'm going to go ahead and wade in. As did a great job of pointing out, paid apps are not the only way to make money, and many ad-supported Android apps have done quite well. But it's certainly possible to pull in significant revenue on paid Android apps. I recently profiled a developer who pulled in more than $150,000 in revenue in the first month after one of his Android apps launched: http://www.androidguys.com/2011/02/09/paid-apps-pay-150k-month/ And as I see apps that have pulled in significant revenue, I've been adding them to a list: http://www.appbrain.com/user/chuckfalzone/high-revenue-apps It's by no means a complete list; just the ones I've come across browsing the Market. Additionally, given Apple's recent move, developers with subscription business models will find much more freedom to conduct business as they see fit on Android than iOS.  Finally, there are plenty of other viable business models beyond paid apps and ad-supported apps, as evidenced by Mark Murphy's "40 Android Business Models" series from 2009: http://www.androidguys.com/?s=%2240+Android+Business+Models%22&x=0&y=0 Android is clearly one of the two mobile platforms with loads of users and lots of momentum. Developers would be foolish to ignore it.

I don't care how much space the Android Market place devotes to paid applications I can vouch for the fact that European users almost never spend money on paid applications. Google has to change the way Google Checkout work if they want to sell low priced applications otherwise a 99c application ends up costing you 2 or 3 times as much because of what your bank charges you. Compare that to Apple's market place or even Amazon (if you have access to it). You pay in your local currency and there is no added charge. Exactly how is that not a huge market entrance barrier? Not to mention that conditioning your user base to look for free applications makes for a terrible profitability. So what if there are several companies that make quite a bit of money from Android Applications? You should check how long did it take for Angry Birds to make a huge profit on iOS and how long it took them to make even a fraction of that on Android. There are considerable differences and if you are a developer that does not have the resources to target both platforms iOS gives you a better return of investment even though there are more Android users. Also there are a lot of applications that have a relatively small userbase and supporting the development through ads is not a viable business plan. Also how does your example of Advanced Task Manager make sense? It is and Android only application and it only proves that Android users do not like paying money for software. And yes ads are a great way of revenues for some applications but certain kinds like say anything designed for the enterprise would never work with ads for so many reasons … well at least not the same way that it does on iOS devices. How is it that iOS gets applications that developers have refused for years to port to Mac and yet Android with an even larger and faster growing userbase is kinda left behind? Don't get me wrong I am not trash talking Android, I am just trying to understand why Google seems to not get the importance of paid applications and make things easy for the end user (well at least with payments)