Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2025-03-10

How to Succeed on iOS vs. Android — Matt Rouif, Photoroom

Short State of Subscription Apps episode. Photoroom co-founder Matt Rouif launched on iOS in 2019 and Android ~1.5 years later once influencer-driven traction brought Android demand; runs separate native teams on a shared rendering/AI engine and ships them independently; notes photo apps earn ~30x more per user on iOS, but Photoroom's business-owner positioning monetizes Android far better; dogfoods Android (founder switched phones for a year, free Android devices for staff); and highlights Google's flat 15% subscription fee vs Apple's 30% first year.

Play the episode

4 tactics

Photoroom · B2C · AI product photo editor

Launch on iPhone first; add Android 1-2 years later once people ask for it

Founder says he'd do the same again; no numbers

Launched on iOS in 2019 as an MVP; built Android about 1.5 years later (2021) once traction arrived via eBay/marketplace sellers and paid influencers whose comment sections filled with 'when is Android coming?'. Rationale: early adopters, especially in photo/video, skew iOS; Android becomes necessary for localization and international reach (Brazil, Southeast Asia, Europe).

Workedmarket-selectionfeature-development

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2025-03-10

Photoroom · B2C · AI product photo editor

Sell the photo app as a way for small businesses to make more money

Android earns far better than typical photo apps; no ratio given

Photoroom pitches itself as helping e-commerce owners, entrepreneurs and restaurant owners get quality imagery for marketplaces, social networks and emails, i.e. it helps them make money. Business owners pay regardless of platform, so Photoroom avoids the photo category's heavy iOS monetization bias and can serve international, Android-heavy markets.

Workedpositioning-nichemarket-selection

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2025-03-10

Photoroom · B2C · AI product photo editor

Test team invites on Android first, where you can track who invited whom

Separate iOS and Android teams share one pixel-rendering/AI engine but are not tied to lockstep releases ('two legs'), so each can move fast. iOS is bigger and usually goes first, but experiments that are easier to measure on Android go Android-first: e.g. team invites, since App Store privacy blocks tracking an invite through install on iOS, so Android gives the benchmark for the ideal invite path.

Unknownexperimentationteam-process

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2025-03-10

Photoroom · B2C · AI product photo editor

Switch the founder to an Android phone for a year and give staff free Androids

Founder says it made the team care about Android details; no numbers

Founder moved his SIM card to a good Android phone and used only Android for about a year while building the app. Any iOS-using employee (especially PMs) who will use or test Android gets a second, Android device. No dedicated QA team: everyone owns their bugs, and a week-long TestFlight / Android internal beta plus analytics catches issues. Support more old OS versions on Android than on iOS.

Unknownteam-processproduct-activation

Sub Club by RevenueCat · 2025-03-10

Numbers mentioned

Who	Metric	Value	Context	When
Photoroom	time to milestone	1.5 years approximate	Gap between iOS launch (2019) and Android launch (2021)	1:51
aggregateApps in general, iOS vs Android, from benchmarks the guest reviewed while at GoPro	arpu	10 x approximate	Ratio of average revenue per user, iOS to Android (iOS had ~3-4x more revenue while Android had ~2x more users)	7:01
aggregateApps in general, iOS vs Android revenue, from benchmarks the guest reviewed while at GoPro	revenue	3–4 x approximate	iOS generated 3-4x more revenue on average than Android, while Android had ~2x more users	7:01
aggregatePhoto apps, iOS vs Android value per user	arpu	30 x approximate	Value of a user on iOS vs Android for photo apps	7:29
marketApple App Store commission on new subscriptions (first year)	commission rate	30%	Drops to 15% after a subscriber renews past one year	13:18
marketGoogle Play commission on all subscriptions	commission rate	15%	All subscriptions from day one; does not apply to games, consumables and one-time purchases (per host)	13:18