iPhone App Sales Numbers Continue to Impress

[MacRumors]

Apple released the first month's sales reports to iPhone and iPod Touch developers earlier this week. These numbers represent the cumulative sales from the iTunes App Store launch on July 11th. While Apple had started providing daily download stats for developers, the stats for the lucrative first couple of weeks had been a mystery.

iPhone developer Tap Tap Tap has published their first month's (July 11-Aug 2) sales numbers for their applications: Where To? [$2.99, App Store] and Tipulator [$0.99, App Store].

The bulk of their revenue came from Where To, a $2.99 application that uses GPS that helps "you find points of interest around you." This one application brought in $50,597.40 in net revenue to the developer after Apple's 30% cut. While much has been said about the success of Sega's Super Monkey Ball and other high profile applications, Where To's numbers reveal the success of an app that has held a popularity ranking in the 50-70s amongst paid apps (ranked in 300s amongst all apps).

Meanwhile, MintApps is a small iPhone developer who provides another point of data with sales from their nutritional facts application called Mint Nutrition [$4.99, App Store]. Mint Nutrition has generated over $1,900 of net revenue after becoming first available on July 21st. The $1900 in sales covers a 12 day period between July 21st through August 2nd. The app's popularity currently ranks only in the 800s amongst all apps and has not broken into the top 100 paid apps. Yet this still represents an average sales of 45 apps/day or $158/day.

Tap Tap Tap's John Casasanta notes that the relative popularity rank influences sales significantly:

We were teetering around the 50th rank for Where To but then slipped under it. It seems that once you drop past that, you’re on a free-fall since the App Store on the iPhone only shows 50 in its top list, compared to 100 in iTunes on the computer.

Ranking stats obtained from Medialets

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[PcBgone]

I think Apple struck GOLD when it came up with the app store. There is nothing like it...and now TMobile is trying scurrying trying to get something together like it to compete.

Kudos to Apple for being innovative! I have looked through the apps and theres many in there that I would love to have...now if only I had the 200 bux for the Iphone

[sushi]

Originally Posted by MacRumors

Tap Tap Tap's John Casasanta notes that the relative popularity rank influences sales significantly:

Interesting.

Guess that it's best to be first and one of the top 50 for continued recognition.

This may not last for long, as I am sure Apple will change/improve the app store.

[kjs862]

I can't wait for tom tom to come out with something. if they come out with a turn by turn navi system, the thing is going to sell like crazy

[Wayfarer]

Oh em gee! I gotta pick me up one of them iPod Touches. Kudos Apple. How revolutionary to have almost everything you could possibly want in your pocket. So convenient.

Now bring on the mac-related news!

[Mykbibby]

This is a time I wish I knew Objective-C...

[BeyondtheTech]

Originally Posted by Wayfarer

Oh em gee! I gotta pick me up one of them iPod Touches. Kudos Apple. How revolutionary to have almost everything you could possibly want in your pocket. So convenient.

Now bring on the mac-related news!

I would wait until the revised iPod touch comes out... There are too many indications that a refresh is an imminent release. If it comes out with an integrated speaker and the real GPS, even those users will be in for a treat.

[BornAgainMac]

It is a great idea. I think it is the best feature of the new iPhone compared to 3G and GPS which work really well for my location. I want a way to categorize hundreds of Apps with the iPhone 3.0 update that will someday see the light of day. My iPhone is loaded with goodies.

[maxjg]

Originally Posted by kjs862

I can't wait for tom tom to come out with something. if they come out with a turn by turn navi system, the thing is going to sell like crazy

Apple prohibits making a turn-by-turn navigation app in the dev ToS.

[arn]

Originally Posted by maxjg

Apple prohibits making a turn-by-turn navigation app in the dev ToS.

Joswiak suggests it may be addressed

Instead he points to "complicated issues" surrounding driving applications but promises "It will evolve. I think our developers will amaze us."

http://www.macrumors.com/2008/07/14/...ng-directions/

[Shot22]

Casasanta makes a good point: the inherent flaw in the App Store is that there are too many good apps for all of them to get noticed.

[gators2281]

The app store is the best thing Apple has come up with in quite some time.

[imwoblin]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5B108 Safari/525.20)

Where is the Wi Fi VoIP application to make calls via Wi Fi? I can't wait for this bad boy.

[gcmexico]

wow...great numbers...everyone is making a killling!!! I need to develop some Apps!

[Buschmaster]

Thanks, arn!

[dagamer34]

Even though there may be a few gems, there's just way too much crud out there to dig through in order to get to them. And a lot of the apps really need some polish. Too many of them just throw together typical iPhone user interface elements that are fairly bland.

But I think I can ignore it for now. It's only been a month right? Hopefully in a year's time, the landscape will be a lot better. A lot of these apps need to hire a graphic designer!

[Evangelion]

iPhone developer Tap Tap Tap has published their first month's (July 11-Aug 2) sales numbers for their applications: Where To? [$2.99, App Store] and Tipulator [$0.99, App Store].

So they are part of the problem of "one million (*pinky to the mouth*) tip-calculators in the App Store!". Seriously: why is everyone writing tip-calculators? I wish we could filter those apps out, since we don't tip people in Finland, so it's annoying when you have to browse through zillion tip-calculators that have zero value to you.

[quigleybc]

I'm picturing all these people scrambling to develop apps that will sell....it's like a nerdy little gold rush...


Run for the hills!!

.....and make an app that's worth the $$

[Ludde]

Seems Apple is once again going to show where the industry should go. They did it with music, even though the prices still have to come down in order to trigger casual mass downloading of music. The App Store is going to show that low price-high volume is a very good idea for selling software too. I wasn't sure about digital distribution before, but now I think I like it.

[marksman]

Originally Posted by Evangelion

So they are part of the problem of "one million (*pinky to the mouth*) tip-calculators in the App Store!". Seriously: why is everyone writing tip-calculators? I wish we could filter those apps out, since we don't tip people in Finland, so it's annoying when you have to browse through zillion tip-calculators that have zero value to you.

Nobody but an imbecile needs a tip calculator to be honest. If you can't figure it out, you have to be able to calculate 10% of the bill and double it for 20%. It is simple and easy and if you can't do it, you should probably not be picking up the check.

I think a lot of people simply took the path of least resistance to try and make money in the app store and we had 100 people make something that nobody even needed. It is shocking they sold as many copies of their calculator as they did to be honest.

I think the Am I Rich app is more useful than all the tip calculators combined.

[whooleytoo]

My guess you'll see wacky stunts/promos/"astroturfing" to get apps initially into the Top 50, where it'll get peoples' attention and hope to go upwards from there.

[maokh]

$158/day? I sure hope that is a one guy operation, and he likes to live cheap. Sadly, Mint Apps is not such an operation.

Not very good ROI.

I suspect a lot of these iPhone app dev houses are going to face the sad reality that selling $1-$5 applications may not even pay the rent.

[arn]

Originally Posted by maokh

$158/day? I sure hope that is a one guy operation, and he likes to live cheap. Sadly, Mint Apps is not such an operation.

Not very good ROI.

You don't know what the I in the ROI was. I don't mean to speak for the developer, but MintApps is a part time endeavor, from my understanding.

arn

[Buschmaster]

It's 2 people and it's part-time.

We're students and work other jobs, so for only working a few hours a day on things it's pretty good.

Sorry for offending you by not driving a BMW.

[twoodcc]

dang, those numbers are crazy! i've got to start developing iphone apps