08/04/2008, 9:55am, EDT
Monday, August 4th
Where To developers expose App Store business
A creator of the popular iPhone app Where To has exposed some of the realities in developing for the App Store. tap tap tap's John Casasanta notes, for instance, that while the company expected to have full sales records from the App Store by now, Apple has so far only shared information dating back to July 28th. In the week of information available, Where To sold about 3,193 downloads at a price of $2.99, leading to $9,547 in net sales.
Because Apple gets to claim 30 percent, TTT's revenue for the week amounts to approximately $6,928 when combined with results from another app; if multiplied by 52 would generate slightly over $360,000 for the entire year. Although selling for a lower price, Where To is said to be beating out any of the company's desktop software.
Casasanta comments though that reasonable income may be dependent on high popularity. Although the other TTT app, Tipulator, is 99 cents and within the top 10 in the App Store's Finance category, only 353 downloads were sold during the recorded period. Unlike Where To, media exposure also failed to boost Tipulator income.
The upside is said to be marketing costs, as the company has spent just $2,000 so far, versus the $250,000 needed to sell the MacHeist II bundle. $1,250 of the iPhone money went to pay for a Daring Fireball ad, while $200 went towards a mail-out, and $300 was used to get reviewers free copies of the apps.
Casasanta says he is extremely optimistic about the App Store as a whole, and that TTT is working on two more programs, Groceries and I'm Here.
Filed under: iPhone, industry, developer, iPhone apps, Apple
Other story tags: App Store
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wow
First off, I believe it's $9500 in gross sales, not Net.
Second, I can't believe he can't believe Apple has only given him sales information through last monday. Wow. A whole week! Did apple say sales data would be sent out hourly/daily/weekly/monthly?
Third, is the guy, or is it the author, who's doing the extrapolation of one week's sales to what a year will be? Either way, its an interesting way to do analysis. Completely wrong, but interesting.
Fourth, are people more surprised that they only sold 393 copies of Tipulator, or that they actually sold 393 copies of a program that takes an amount and multiplies it by .15 or .20? Have we really hit the intellectual stage where someone needs to pull out their iPhone in order to figure out a tip on a bill? (BTW, here's the easy way. Take the total. Move the decimal place one to the left. That's 10%. Now double it. That's 20%. Figure it out from there.