Google has paid Android developers about half of what Apple has

I'm not surprised. I have a Pixel 3 to test stuff with and the quality of the apps just doesn't compare. It seems that Apple customers are just more willing to pay, so they get much better apps. iOS is also far easier to create great apps for - Android app development is an unmitigated disaster in comparison, particularly when it comes to things that are very important in 2020: video and photo capabilities. So not only is it harder to build apps, you make much less money as well if you do. So it's not surprising there aren't many apps worth paying for on there. And on top of that you're also selling to people who statistically have much less money to begin with.

>The vast majority of phones on Earth run Android,

Yes but there are Google Android, and Chinese Android. The latter doesn't really contribute anything to Google's ecosystem.

The estimate currently are roughly 2.1B Google Android Vs 700M iPhone excluding China. With China representing around 30% of App Store Revenue.

So we have 2.1B Android with $80B Revenue, and 700M iPhone with $108B Revenue. On a per user spending basis that is Android @ $38.1 and iPhone @ $154.3.

Which is roughly 4.04x difference.

This is unsurprising given their positioning in the market. Apple sells exclusively premium devices (for the most part). A huge portion of Android's install base is comprised of budget devices whose users are less likely to spend money on apps.

I'm not a fan of these headlines. Android users have bought about half as much as iOS users have; Google and Apple are just intermediaries.