After spending what seems like an eternity in the catch-up game, the Android platform managed to finally overtake iOS a couple of months ago in terms of revenue. However, it appears that the CPI (cost per install) is picking up the pace as well.

A new report from GamesIndustry International indicates that, according to data provided by Fiksu, the CPI for Android has managed to increase over iOS, with the average cost on Android being $1.82 and Apple’s format sitting at 50 cents less, at $1.32.

“There’s definitely opportunity to reach a continually growing user base on Android, but it’s going to come at a cost,” said Fiksu’s Glen Kiladis. “Android games cost for the month of May were nearly 40 percent higher than iOS costs, a trend that can also be observed on a broader scale outside of just games. In fact, Android costs were up 72 percent since March, while iOS costs were relatively flat compared to just two months prior.”

He continued, “As we’ve mentioned before, these indexes include both incent and non-incent spending. As a result, iOS games costs are often times lower than Android games costs as a result of increased spending on IOS on lower-cost incentivized networks. Nonetheless, this is the highest Android games costs have been during the past year.

“When looking at year over year trends, Android costs were up 31 percent while iOS costs were down 25 percent. In May of 2014, costs on both platforms were hovering around the $1.50 mark.

“These higher costs on Android are not unexpected. In our broader Fiksu Indexes, we’ve observed a pattern of increasing costs across the board. However, as advertisers consistently employ higher-value targeting and more precise audience segmentation data, we expect that loyalty rates will also go up.”

It’ll be interesting to see how this shapes up over the next year…