$30 Million in App Store Sales in One Month, Confirms Kill Switch

[MacRumors]

In an interview with Steve Jobs, The Wall Street Journal reports that the iTunes App Store has delivered over 60 million programs to customers over the course of the first month. While most of those applications were free, Jobs does reveal that Apple has sold an average of $1 million a day in applications for a total of $30 million in sales over the first month. Jobs says he's "never seen anything like this in my career for software."

Some of the big winners amongst the sales include Sega's Super Monkey Ball [App Store] which saw over 300,000 downloads in the first 20 days. This represents over $2 million in net revenue for this $9.99 game alone. Meanwhile, the popular medical reference Epocrates [App Store] has seen over 125,000 downloads during its short time in the App Store. This compares quite favorably to Epocrates previously installed base of 500,000 other mobile users.

Also addressed is the recent discussion surrounding application removals. An Apple spokesperson described the pulling of the I am Rich application as a "judgement call".

Finally, Jobs confirms the ability to remotely disable an application:

"Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull"

Article Link

[EricNau]

Wow, those numbers are definitely impressive. We all knew it was going to be successful, but I doubt any of us would have predicted this.

[Ntombi]

Wow. As popular as I knew it was, that's still amazing. They'll never have another month like that, but it's still amazing.

[arn]

Another tidbit from the article:

Mr. Jobs said developers' share of iPhone application sales in the first month was about $21 million, of which the top 10 developers earned roughly $9 million.

arn

[irvingdizzle]

This will definitely help in future development of amazing applications with such high profits.

[Small White Car]

Very interesting stuff.

And this is with, how shall I say, a flood of less than stellar apps. Imagine how this store will do once it grows to include more usefull applications.

[koobcamuk]

I wish there was an app I could make that everyone wants. The money here is silly!

[Nonnus3G]

what a joke

it is so nice for them to publish all these amazing numbers

however noone really cares to properlly report the ****** treatment and support given to developers that are fuelling this money machine

with all those millions earned there really is no reason for not replying to requests for whole weeks is it ?

i am being so verbal because as a registered developer with approved apps for over a week but blocked from the store for mysterious contractual reasons i have been completelly unable to get any reply from them to all my info / support requests

a little visit to the dev forums easily shows i am not the only one

btw, my apps are a series midi controllers for the iphone,
the 1st submitted over 3 weeks ago

[admanimal]

Hopefully this means that developers will actually be getting checks soon...

[Flowbee]

Easy to believe if my (depleted) bank account is any indication. (No, I didn't buy "I am rich")

My name is Flowbee, and I'm an iPhone app addict.

[deckwalker]

That is indeed an impressive amount of sales. It's particularly impressive that the top ten developers earned $9 million. I wonder what those apps are? Are they all games, all expensive or something I'm missing? Hopefully money like this will lead to more mature, and unique, apps instead of a bandwagon of people saying: I want to get rich quick!

Speaking of getting rich quickly, I'm disappointed that they pulled the "I am rich" app. Yeah it was a gimmick, but it was a funny one.

[ariza910]

Link to the article for those of you that aren't WSJ subscribers.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121842341491928977.html

Wow, the app store may become a half a billion business next year, thats amazing!

Wonder if Jobs is rethinking that 30/70 split.

[geerlingguy]

It's been less than a month... I think we'll see many great things come of the App Store. I'm really hoping for turn-by-turn navigation—I'd be willing to put down a few Hamiltons for that!

[TalkAboutApple]

I feel very ignorant, but in my 14 years in software I haven't a clue what the overall sales for commercial software and games are. Obviously its a very wide market, but for consumer "fun" apps, I wonder if $30M is a drop in the bucket indicating a great launch with future potential, or if it is a huge number in absolute terms.

[bugfaceuk]

Originally Posted by TalkAboutApple

I feel very ignorant, but in my 14 years in software I haven't a clue what the overall sales for commercial software and games are. Obviously its a very wide market, but for consumer "fun" apps, I wonder if $30M is a drop in the bucket indicating a great launch with future potential, or if it is a huge number in absolute terms.

It's pretty small money right now, but I think the key issue is that a $30M market appeared overnight. I doubt any of us could not see the potential, but to see it realized is great.

[sushi]

Wow. The app store is doing very well.

Probably a bit of a surge at first, and will level out a bit lower.

However, more new apps will be introduced which should offset that.

This is great for developers.

[Marx55]

Clearly, the iPhone represents a new REVOLUTION. The shame is that it does NOT allow to do what many other Windows-based smart phones have been doing for YEARS now:

http://www.impatica.com/showmate

Hopefully, in the next revision... Meanwhile we will wait or just switch to Windows. Sadly.

[MacTheSpoon]

This is awesome, and it's happened with a bunch of apps that have been developed pretty quickly. I know that the surface is just being scratched in terms of what we're going to see when developers start releasing programs that they've had more time to work on.

Super exciting stuff!

Also, I'm sure Apple will be putting their share of the profits into adding staff and resources to make the development approval process quicker, as well as improving other aspects of the store.

[fleshman03]

I wonder what the stock will do tomorrow...

Any takes for how much it'll fall?

It always seems to do that with good news when it should climb 10%.

[Nonnus3G]

Originally Posted by MacTheSpoon

Also, I'm sure Apple will be putting their share of the profits into adding staff and resources to make the development approval process quicker, as well as improving other aspects of the store.

unfortunately as a developer i am not...

the more i think about it the more i am curious about when do we start hearing the developers complaining they are not even receiving their due earnings....

if they didn t care to warn armin they would take out his i am rich app or answer him when he noticed so and started asking...
in his place i would be really concerned about my 4200 $...

what can he do ?
fly up there to cupertino and bang on the gate ?
yeah, right

[xix]

Originally Posted by Ntombi

Wow. As popular as I knew it was, that's still amazing. They'll never have another month like that, but it's still amazing.

You don't know that. I wouldn't be surprised at all.

[Zieg3rman]

Originally Posted by fleshman03

I wonder what the stock will do tomorrow...

Any takes for how much it'll fall?

It always seems to do that with good news when it should climb 10%.

I have noticed that. It's confusing but it has become a reliable trend with Apple...

[fleshman03]

Originally Posted by Zieg3rman

I have noticed that. It's confusing but it has become a reliable trend with Apple...

Always buy stock the day after they announce good news.

Weird - but with Apple it seems like a rule of thumb.

Now two days after good news....

[queshy]

Holy cow.

I'm pretty worthless as a customer, I guess haha. I spent ~$27. So $27/30 million = 0.00009%.

Nice job Apple and developers!

[inkswamp]

Sega's Super Monkey Ball [App Store] which saw over 300,000 downloads in the first 20 days.

I read recently that the video game industry generally only considers a console title a success if it sells 50K copies (which is where the typical title cover its development costs.) Considering that Sega was able to develop Monkey Ball for iPhone with a relatively minimal investment (at least considering how the guy from Sega described the development experience) I imagine 300K must be viewed as a stellar success, even at $9.99 a download.

I'm not one of those people who viewed the iPhone as a potential competitor in the handheld game market, but I'm starting to rethink that. Apple could have a chance at expanding interest in the iPhone/iPod Touch through gaming. What a weird turn of events that would be, especially considering how bumpy a ride Apple has had with gaming in the last decade.