Apple's App Store Tops 40 Billion Downloads; Generates $7 Billion For Developers 177
An anonymous reader writes "With the eyes of the tech world fixed on CES this week, Apple this morning conveniently decided to issue a press release announcing that the iTunes App Store has now topped over 40 billion downloads. That's an incredible feat, to be sure, but even more incredible is that nearly half of those downloads occurred in 2012. In December alone, iOS users downloaded over 2 billion applications, setting a monthly record in the process."
Unique downloads? (Score:4, Interesting)
or all downloads.
Re:Unique downloads? (Score:5, Informative)
or all downloads.
They don't count updates or re-downloads in that figure.
Wow (Score:2)
That is an insane level of growth. One of the things that doesn't get discussed a lot here was Verizon, AT&Ts and Sprint's sales numbers for postpay (around 70%) marketshare. I don't know however how large the global cellphone software market is x-USA.
The other data I'd love to know is how much cloud based solutions like Dropbox and Evernote that owe a lot of their revenue to mobile app are getting.
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Let's see what Apple has to say! [apple.com]
Why the fuck editors wouldn't link to the actual press release, rather than idiotic networkworld clickbait is beyond me. I guess "news" doesn't like primary sources, it's easier to just let networkworld flog their useless "reportage" instead.
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I guess "news" doesn't like primary sources...
Hey, if it isn't good enough for Wikipaedia, it's not good enough for /.;^)
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Take a user who got the original iPhone and bought each new version of the iPhone. .
..out the back and shoot him.
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Google provide developers with interesting metrics like the number of people who have your app installed and the number of people who actively use it (i.e. bother to open it semi-regularly). I know a lot of people fill their phones will apps, so I'd love to know what percentage of these downloads are either never touched or were deleted within 5 minutes of installation.
How many developers? (Score:3)
2 Billion $ devided by 1000's of developers is not much income per dev. I'd rather see an average breakdown per dev or full breakdown.
Re:How many developers? (Score:4, Insightful)
7 Billion dollars.....
What you have to realise is that is just payout form Apple.
Many developers (including myself) make a living developing custom applications for businesses. So that figure is just for those who sell their wares.
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Most if the money is made by the top dev houses
Just like in the play store and in hardware sales
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$7 billion spread across 10 thousand developers is still $700,000 per developer.
If that's 'not much income' for you, you're selling drugs on the side.
Re:How many developers? (Score:5, Informative)
It's overwhelmingly games. And of these top 100 apps, developers like Rovio and EA are overrepresented. Meaning if your app isn't a game and your company isn't Rovio, you're probably not making much at all. Rovio and EA on the other hand are probably making well over $700,000.
Re:How many developers? (Score:4, Interesting)
No idea, but do paid apps count if they're free, but with in-app purchases?
That would well skew things.
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The part that's relevant to most of us is that while Google Play is poised to surpass iTunes in catalog size, it brings in 1/4 the revenue.
Not the sort of stat that puts a smile on my face.
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Countries with no paid apps (Score:2)
The unknown figure for both platforms is how much developers are making from ad revenue. This could potentially be much higher on Android.
I'd imagine that this is the case because when Android phones first came out, paid applications weren't available on Android Market in all countries. So developers had to price their applications at zero to reach users in those countries.
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At the same time, that revenue figure is only a measurement of the paid apps revenue. The unknown figure for both platforms is how much developers are making from ad revenue. This could potentially be much higher on Android.
Ahh, yes. Android developers make their money with adds, while Android users block ads.
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Absolutely I'd certainly concede that differences like those exist, and can badly skew comparison. I'd love to see cumulative figures without the outliers.
But it's not as if this difference hasn't been demonstrated at more atomic levels by individual sellers as well. Make an app for both, list it in both, you'll make a lot more money through Apple. I can't even remember an exception to this, though perhaps one exists.
I won't speculate on the why's ("cheapskates", lesser devices, etc), but it's just a realit
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It's not much money for a company. It's great if you can make that for an app that you made in your spare time but that doesn't happen that often.
Re:How many developers? (Score:5, Informative)
Many of whom have not released an app.
I'm a registered iOS developer, it's free.
Nice to be able to take a look around at what is possible.
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That was kind of my point.
LOTS of people aren't going to put out $100 just try out an app on the AppStore
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You're retarded. >95% of iOS developers don't get any of the 7Billion. iOS development is a fool's lottery designed to suck time and resources away from morons like you... in fact most app store devs are in this boat and don't even know it.
[Citation needed]
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2 Billion $ devided by 1000's of developers is not much income per dev. I'd rather see an average breakdown per dev or full breakdown.
That is an average of 7000000000/775000 or $9032.25 per app. It is pretty hard to compare Android earnings because they are mostly from third parties via advertising. For example, out of the $100,000 or so I have made on Android apps, about $200 came from the Android market itself.
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That is an average of 7000000000/775000 or $9032.25 per app.
76% of apps are on the app store are free, and thus don't expect any income, at least from downloads. Some of them will have in game purchases though.
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There are 275,000 registered developers in the USA alone ( source: Apple [apple.com]). Even with an unrealistic 300K world-wide estimation, the average is less than $7000. Of course, your average developer won't even come close to that figure, as a few key players such as Rovio, EA, or Gameloft would grab a massive part of the pie for themselves.
In other words, the gold rush is dead. There is still the occasional success story (Apple likes those stories and routinely puts some indie title in a featured space) but there
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It's about 6-months old, but here you go:
Breakdown of VisionMobile study [gigaom.com]
Ya as a comparison (Score:2)
That is the kind of sales that one Call of Duty game can do.
Now that's fine, I'm not saying everything should (or can) be a massive billion dollar hit but let's have a little perspective. What do developers tend to make?
This would particularly be interesting if you take off the outliers. Remove Angry Birds, and any other really big hit apps and then see what it looks like for the masses of developers.
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It takes far more than coding to make a game. The graphics need drawing, backgrounds and objects. The sounds need creating. The levels need designing. They all need testing and refining.
Angry Birds is far more sophisticated than you imagine. There ARE similar flash games available on line, such as one with a castles theme. But they aren't as enjoyable. They spent time to perfectly balance the mechanics and level design in Angry Birds. Angry Birds success wasn't a fluke. They didn't just market it well so th
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please don't try to compare Angry Birds' development efforts for some of the major-motion-picture efforts of your typical FPS.
I didn't and I wouldn't. Angry Birds is a 99c game. "major-motion-picture efforts of your typical FPS" cost anything up to $60.
I'm saying that, compared to other 99c app developers, who may be making little money, Rovio put in the work. They deserve their success.
Not because it was particularly a "good" game. And certainly not because of massive development efforts.
Here's the similar Flash game I mentioned. People spent weeks playing Angry Birds. I doubt many would spend more than minutes playing this.
http://armorgames.com/play/3614/crush-the-castle [armorgames.com]
Angry Birds may not be to your taste, But judged by the amou
Comparisons (Score:3)
The numbers on Android are a little hard to find. Does anyone have a figure for how many Android tablet apps are available?
It seems the Google Play store is growing faster, with 833 apps per day on average between September and October... but based on Google's previous announcements they seem to approve apps in fits and starts, with some periods approving thousands of apps per day, and other periods where the approval rate drops to 1/3 of that. (Source: Google)
On the Windows side, the Windows 8/RT store is growing at the same rate as the iPad app catalog, with an average 584 apps per day (before the Holidays). And the Windows Phone store is growing at about 300 apps per day over the past 6 months. I don't know how to combine these figures to compare to Android or iOS, since it's not clear how iOS counts apps for iPhone and iPad (is that 1 app or 2 apps) (Source: http://metrostore.preweb.sk/ [preweb.sk] and http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/ [allaboutwindowsphone.com])
Anyone else have other figures available?
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Google's most recent figure was 700,000 apps in the Google Play store. That's a discrepancy of almost 100,000 apps, probably more since the 700,000 figure is from October. Any ideas why the figures are so different? I'm assuming this App Brain site is crawling the Google Play store for its statistics. They have a nice set of stats, but disappointingly not the one I'm interested in: the number of tablet specific/optimise
Citation? (Score:2)
Wiki tells me that 250 Million iPhones have been sold.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone [wikipedia.org]
Apple tells us 40 Billion downloads. (Unique Purchaces)
40B/250M = 160
So the AVERAGE iPhone downloads 160 Applications?
#Fishy
iPad (Score:2)
Hmmm forgot about the iPad... another 100M there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad [wikipedia.org]
Still 40B/350M = 114
Still 114 is a pretty big number.
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There's more than 500 million iOS devices.
Some of which have been resold/wiped/reimaged, and thus count as new downloads after wiping/new account.
So - only $14 in app sales per device?? (Score:2)
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Wait, are you comparing the majority/monopoly of the entirety of the computing platform to a small mobile, hardware specific OS?
No. (Score:2)
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Citation:
http://www.insidemobileapps.com/2012/07/24/ios-device-sales-leapfrog-android-with-410-million-devices-sold/ [insidemobileapps.com]
+ 50M iOS devices a quarter = 500M iOS devices.
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I have 29 "apps" on my Mac via Mac App Store. Consider apps like the Mac shareware of the 1980-90's - the app does a few tasks well or like a hypercard stack and 'sells' information for a few $ or $10.
Only on weekends (Score:2)
Not on all days.
Re:Citation? (Score:5, Informative)
Fishy? Not really. Your facts are just poorly aggregated.
For instance, you only accounted for iPhone sales, but Apple also sells the iPad, iPad mini, and iPod Touch, all of which are also iOS devices that can download and run these apps. Through March 2012 they had announced 365M iOS device sales [macobserver.com], and by the end of the next quarter (i.e. the quarter when iPhone sales were winding down before the iPhone 5 and iPad mini rumors were rampant, thus slowing sales) they still managed to sell 35M units, bringing them to over 400M iOS devices by the end of June [engadget.com]. So, already we can tell that you're off by 150M units at a minimum, and that still leaves the following six months of sales unaccounted for.
Going forward past June, Apple has since then released the iPhone 5, a new iPod Touch, the iPad mini, and the 4th gen iPad. Whether the mini is cannibalizing larger iPad sales or not will be revealed soon, since Apple is set to do their earnings announcement for the holiday quarter in about two weeks. Even if it is, however, its sales are estimated to be in the 8-10M range [bgr.com]. Meanwhile, the iPhone 5 represented over 50% of smartphone sales [bgr.com] as we got towards the end of the year, so it's safe to say that it's been selling well so far. Not to mention that iPad and iPod sales have traditionally picked up during the holiday season since they're not tied to contracts.
As such, 450-500M is a perfectly reasonable expectation for where they are today, given that it's six months since their last announced numbers and they've updated every single product line that's relevant right before the biggest sales time of the year.
And if we assume just 450M devices, then that would mean 40B/450M, which is around 89 apps on average, which is extremely reasonable, given that they're doubtless including all of those apps that people download, check out for five minutes, and then delete because they aren't what they're looking for. I did a quick sanity check, and I have 84 third-party apps currently installed on my smartphone, not to mention a few more on my tablet, and that doesn't include the dozens I've installed and deleted over the years. I wouldn't even classify myself as a heavy user; I actually think my usage is pretty close to typical for most users, since I don't use it as a geek tool or like a power user would.
Apple's Goods and Bads (Score:2, Interesting)
-- "App Store" is a walled garden designed to keep you in
-- "App Store" is well maintained and crapware/spamware does not sneak in that often
-- "App Store" has an opaque process for allowing or denying, whether you are a singleton programmer or a 8-kiloton-Grrrilla like google. You don't get to know why you got stymied or what you need to do to fix it.
-- It provides a good "storefront" for developers to
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>Their awful awful policy makes it impossible to package and distribute any GPL code through their ecosystem. Das ist verboten.
Actually no. It's the GPL that makes that sort of problems (as always). Ask VLC that was released on the AppStore just to be sabotaged by one (1) pissed dev payed by Nokia. There are a number of GPL licensed apps on the AppStore. Apple has no problems with them as long as the devs agree to the AppStore terms.
Lesson to be learned : either use LGPL or better a BSD style license. (i
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Their awful awful policy makes it impossible to package and distribute any GPL code through their ecosystem.
This can also be phrased as "The GPL bans distribution through systems like the app store". Of course, neither of these reflects the truth, both are in equal part the problem.
Re:Apple's Goods and Bads (Score:4, Interesting)
No, it's just not allowed to package GPLv3 apps. All app stores have this problem, at least the ones with DRM (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, MAYBE Google Play, since DRM was introduced as part of Jelly Bean).
GPLv2 apps can be distributed just fine. GPLv2+ as well, as long as nothing makes it GPLv3+. (GPLv2 and v3/v3+ code CANNOT be combined - only v2+).
Heck, I'm not sure, but if a dev is classy enough, they could ship the source code into the IPA file too, so source code is right there with the binary.
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Thanks for the clarification. I did not know that fine point!
Well and truly (Score:3)
Let's see 40billion downloads generate $7billion for developers.
So each download puts about 17 cents into the pockets of a developer.
An excellent business model for Apple.
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iTunes is 30% exactly the same as the App Store is.
And the concept of a few stars getting the majority of the income is the same too.
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There are plenty of people giving free music away. They just aren't given the option to do it via iTunes.
You don't have a rational point.
Wait. (Score:2)
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Which is exactly my point - musicians get paid for every download, app devs get paid for 1-in-6. Big difference there.
Your point is that developers who chose to set their app price at zero get zero income from the download.
Clearly your specialist subject is the bleeding obvious.
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I see you're a Linux fan. How much do Linux developers earn per download?
Not a fan of any. User/maintainer of Windows, (Score:2)
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I hear that some folks make a ton of money for Linux stuff they develop. IBM, Red Hat, Oracle, etc etc etc. And I highly doubt they have to have 6 customers download something to make a single dollar.
You're kidding. There's more like 10,000 people download Red Hat Linux for every one that pays.
And of course, once again, no App Store developer who puts a price on his apps has anyone downloading apps for free.
If you haven't realised by now the illogicality of your statement, you must have an IQ problem.
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You're kidding. There's more like 10,000 people download Red Hat Linux for every one that pays.
Obviously a lot of their community software is free, like Fedora. But they charge a lot more than a buck to their paying customers for subscription maintenance service.
CFE qualifications. (Score:3)
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A high % of the apps on the store are free.
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That's an even better business model for Apple.
Exactly. (Score:2)
Re:Doesn't pay much (Score:4, Insightful)
Since Apple is paying for the infrastructure, it's actually quite good. You try paying for your own servers and bandwidth - you won't be making anything after 6 downloads.
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You have to factor in free downloads.
I would assume that the free, gimped, holiday version of angry birds is one download (remember kids, the first taste of crack is always free) and the full version would be another.
By the way, does the 7b included ”in app” ad revenue and purchases?
Horrible ROI. (Score:2)
So on average one dollar for every six download.
iTunes music and video sales must be a freaking goldmine compared to that - 6 app downloads just to make a buck??? If it weren't for ad revenue, this model wouldn't work at all. Might as well not even bother.
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That's 1 paid download against 5 free downloads. The 5 free downloads were never expected to get any money from downloading.
If it weren't for ad revenue, this model wouldn't work at all. Might as well not even bother.
Have you considered telling Google their business model is flawed, and they might as well give up?
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Compare that 30% with the system in place by the phone companies. You were lucky if you got 30%.
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And suggests ~$10 billion in revenue; assuming $1 per download, that suggests 1 out of 4 downloads was paid. Even at $5 per download that suggests 1 in 20 downloads was paid. I find even that hard to beleive.
Especially given how many people I know that spend a large amount of their free time downloading free apps, messing with them for 10 minutes, and then deleting them.
Hell, that's even how I approach mobile apps. For example I bought my son a "toy guitar" for christmas; it pretty much needs constant tunin
Re:And Apple's cut... (Score:4, Insightful)
And suggests ~$10 billion in revenue; assuming $1 per download, that suggests 1 out of 4 downloads was paid. Even at $5 per download that suggests 1 in 20 downloads was paid. I find even that hard to believe.
Apple's users don't mind paying for getting something with better quality. That's the major reason why, despite the larger numbers of Android phones, developers prefer the iOS platform.
And yes, the figure will include in-app purchases. It's the "paid out to developers" figure, so is not just downloads.
For example I bought my son a "toy guitar" for christmas; it pretty much needs constant tuning. so I went through 7 or 8 different free guitar tuning apps before finding one I liked.
Sure, and there will be other people like you. And then there will be people who are not like you. People tend to overestimate the number of people that are similar to themselves.
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People tend to overestimate the number of people that are similar to themselves.
Most insightful comment on slashdot ever.
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Erm, most of those cheap guitars come with electronic tuners. You must have really cheaped out to get a "toy" guitar without a tuner. Besides, a decent chromatic tuner is about $30 in Australia (so it's probably cheaper where you live). If you wasted more than 1 hour of your time on free apps, you lost money.
Beyond this, y
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You must have really cheaped out to get a "toy" guitar without a tuner.
He's 8. We'll see if he has any interest in learning a musical instrument or not before buying something decent.
Besides, a decent chromatic tuner is about $30 in Australia (so it's probably cheaper where you live). If you wasted more than 1 hour of your time on free apps, you lost money.
Not sure where you would go to buy a guitar tuner on Christmas morning, and I value staying away from the mall on boxing day at more than $30... and real
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80% of zero is zero.
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Seems like a reasonable cost for running something on the scale that they do.
Re:And Apple's cut... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And Apple's cut... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a game developer, and I have my game in apple store, it is called Block Story.
I have my app in the apple store and google play. There is nothing compelling me to use google play for example, I could sell the game from my own web site but I would be crazy to do this. I still voluntarily pay that 30% to have the app in google play and apple store.
Why do I do it? well, you really can't dismiss all the work they do for you (both stores), consider:
They charge 30%? you know what, they earned it.
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Just to be a pendant,
There is something compelling you to use Google Play, the services and advantages you listed in your post. What you mean is there is nothing forcing you to use Google Play.
This is a commission, standard procedure really. They're handling the store front, you're making the merchandise. It's worked well this way for centuries
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Sorry, compelling was the wrong word, I meant coercing. English is my second language ;)
The fee apple charges is really nothing, I got 2 times that amount on day 1. Calling that double dipping is stretching it. It is obviously just a token to make sure people don't open accounts for the heck of it. That if you open an account is because you actually want to release an app.
Besides, they do not deceive you in any way, you know well in advance what the fee is and that they charge 30%. If you decide
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No problems, I was just being a pendant.
Not really, They aren't charging a once off fee for a developer license. They are charging it yearly. Don't pay the fee and they take down your application.
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Don't pay the fee and they take down your application.
Citation needed. I believe they just don't allow you to upload new apps or updates. Also, for that $99 fee you get two developer support events. That means Apple engineers are looking at your code and helping you.
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Wether they can automate the whole thing or not, does not make an iota of difference to me. Heck I would actually prefer if they automate it because it means less human error. What matters to me is the value that this service has. What matters to me is that this service is worth much more to me than the $99/year + 30%. What matters to me is that the alternative: doing it myself, would cost me much more, and it would have much worse sales.
If they could automate all of this and do it at a cost of
Re:And Apple's cut... (Score:5, Insightful)
But credit card transactions is a big expenditure here... Try finding a payment provider that takes less than 30% or 30 cent?
Maybe you can get it cheaper if you are a big player like Apple, but when both Google, Amazon and Paypal are priced at 30% or 30 cent, I imagine that VISA and MASTER card prices are pretty much up there...
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The payment card industry negotiates rates based on many things, including what your card handling practices are, if your entire network and organization is PCI compliant [pcisecuritystandards.org], volume, average transaction size, etc.
For example, I work for a company that does about $100B in retail revenue annually. Our holy IT mantra is to not do anything that even remotely would run afoul of the PCI audit, because losing certified compliance would cause the transaction fees to go up, which is literally a billion dollar mistake.
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If you are selling a $5 app, that 30 cents just became
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5% - Humble Store. They do barely better than break even, but the point is they *do* break even. 30% is 25% profit.
Re:RMS (Score:5, Funny)
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RMS should be proud. All those developers can now afford to make some kind of contribution to GNU.
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So, $7 billion made from 40 billion downloads equals $1 for every 5.7 downloads. Ouch indeed.
That downloads figure includes all the free apps as well.
If we divide that 7 Billion over the 5 Million registered developer accounts they have made in the entire time that the store has been running (5 years) they've made $1400 each. That's not even enough to pay for the 5x$99 fees and $1500 for the Mac needed to do development.
That would be pretty disingenuous given developer registration is free and that the app store currently has around 775,000 apps [gsmarena.com], your numbers make no sense. Even if you made the obviously false assumption that every app was paid or supported by iAds it still works out to an average of around $9000 per app.
Re:RMS (Score:5, Informative)
And that statement is downright deceitful considering you need to pay the $99 yearly license fee to get you application listed.
Wrong, it isn't deceitful at all, nowhere near 5 million people have listed applications, in fact there aren't even 20% of that number of applications in the app store today, yet you claim 5 million people have been paying $99 a year for the past 5 years, obviously a ridiculous and baseless claim that isn't in any way even close to being conceivably accurate.
You still need to pay for the Mac to develop on regardless of if you release anything.
Not if you already have one, and you certainly don't need one to become a registered developer. Moreover i doubt many people are buying a mac solely for the purpose of iOS development.
A free developer registration only gives you the right to look, not to touch (as in release an application).
Yes and the numbers speak for themselves, the vast majority have not released any application.
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Well, consider this - the App Store is the ONLY market for iPhone software so those numbers are for all software sales for iPhone. That $7B figure that is tossed around is not for 2012, but since the App Store was created. Electronic Arts alone is making $4B a year in revenue. So, obviously, the iPhone is not supporting the kind of software ecosystem that either Windows or even Mac OS supports.
mjwx is right - it's a rube's game to develop for iPhone. It's certainly not something you can design a major c
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Well, consider this - the App Store is the ONLY market for iPhone software so those numbers are for all software sales for iPhone. That $7B figure that is tossed around is not for 2012, but since the App Store was created.
And the averages work out to - assuming all apps were paid apps (which they certainly aren't) - around $9000 per app.
Electronic Arts alone is making $4B a year in revenue.
So? I'm sure some of that comes from iOS as well as from Android, PC, PS, XBox and Wii.
it's a rube's game to develop for iPhone. It's certainly not something you can design a major company around.
Why would anyone build a company exclusively around iOS apps? Most port to other platforms so the contribution from iOS is only part of their income or do it as a hobby so i'm not sure what your point or complaint is supposed to be. Are you trying to say one shouldn't pin all their hopes on iOS apps? If so
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Near 0 –apple reject apps with "little or no utility".
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Charity? Where?
It's business. On both sides.