Developers who are hoping for high sales of their Android apps may be disappointed by the findings of the most recent Distimo report.

Distimo has undertaken and in-depth analysis of downloads from the Android Market and concluded that:

• It is more challenging for developers in the Google Android Market than in the Apple App Store to monetize using a one-off fee monetization model. We found that only two paid applications have been downloaded more than half a million times in the Google Android Market worldwide to date, while six paid applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone generate the same number of downloads within a two month timeframe in the United States alone.
• Looking at just games, there are five paid games in Google Android Market with over 250,000 downloads worldwide. In the Apple App Store for iPhone ten paid games generated more than 250,000 downloads in the United States alone in two months.

Two charts summarize the download profile of free and paid for apps in the Android Market:

The above chart reveal that the majority (51.8%) of free applications have been downloaded less than 1,000 times to date with almost a fifth (19.6%) having been downloaded less than 100 times.

The report gives more details of the figures regarding free apps:

• Google Maps is the all-time most successful free application in the Google Android Market and is the only application that has been downloaded more than 50,000,000 times
• 26 free applications have been downloaded between 10,000,000 and 50,000,000 times
• 69 free applications have been downloaded between 5,000,000 and 10,000,000 times

With regard to Paid apps the picture is bleaker:

This chart shows that almost four-fifths (79.3%) of all paid-for applications have been downloaded fewer than 100 times to date.

Distmo comments:

We have estimated that in March and April together, six paid applications have generated more than 500,000 downloads each in just the United States in the Apple App Store for iPhone. In the Google Android Market however, only two paid applications have exceeded more than 500,000 downloads (but under 1 million) worldwide to date: Beautiful Widgets and Robo Defense. Hence, the possibility to generating over 500,000 paid downloads is a real possibility for more applications in the Apple App Store than in the Google Android Market.

You can download In-Depth View On Download Volumes In The Google Android Market from Distimo