iPhone application development house taptaptap has published sales figures for the first month of sales for their two AppStore applications, bringing further insight into overall sales volume and figures for the online store. The two applications developed by the company are WhereTo, an application that provides a more general GPS interface to the iPhone with location-based services, and Tipulator, a simple tip calculator.
WhereTo retails for $2.99 in the store and 24,094 copies were sold in the first month – netting the company just over $50,000 in revenue after Apple took their cut (it currently ranks #69 on the top paid application list). Tipulator retails for 99 cents, and sold 3,168 copies which resulted in just over $2,200 of revenue (it is currently unranked). The table below outlines overall sales volumes and revenues for each application:
taptaptap AppStore sales and revenue numbers for US sales, month 1
| WhereTo | TipCalculator | |
| URL | AppStore | AppStore |
| Price | $2.99 | $0.99 |
| Number Sold | 24,094 | 3,168 |
| Gross Sales | $72,041.06 | $3,136.32 |
| Net Sales (after AppStore cut) | $50,597.40 | $2,217.60 |
| Total Gross | $75,177.38 | |
| Total Net | $52,815 |
The resulting net profit and sales figures are good for a small company that has developed one application that is relatively sophisticated, and another that is very straight forward and simple but yet still brings in $2,000 a month. There is definitely great revenue potential for developers of iPhone applications, as users of the AppStore and the iPhone in general are more likely to pay for applications. Integrating with iTunes makes the process simple for the user, but for the developer poses a challenge as all applications must be submitted to Apple and must meet their approval.
We should also note that while both of these applications have done well, their download figures unsurprisingly pale in comparison to those of Facebook and Tap Tap Revenge, both of which have over 1 million users. The real money in the App Store may well lie in monetizing these free applications, be it through integrated advertising or downloadable content (though it remains to be seen what restrictions Apple will place on this kind of strategy).
Seems like they want to suck all the developers from FaceBook and the like….. Apple guys are REAL genius business gurus!
I agree with the fact that they are business Geniuses because with every product they have, things what people crave… iPod..iTunes.. iPhone..App Store… with stuff people want… iTunes, music App Store, Apps for the iPhone!
http://blabtech.blogspot.com
ya I like Still I m Using 8GB Iphone woowww Cool
“straight forward and simple” – “but yet still brings in $2,000 a month”, it has brought in $2,000 for the first month, that does NOT say it will for the coming months too
I agree. Lets see what happens within the next year; Will new, fresh apps succeed, or will only the best of the best flourish and the rest fail?
Total Net $52,815
Wooowwwww! They’re rich! Will they buy a Tesla now?
Umm, not rich enough…
While that’s not a huge number, it’s also not small either. I agree with Joost de Valk on waiting to see how sustainable this becomes, because being ranked #69 should be considered fairly successful yet $50,000 for the first month doesn’t seem like much. For an individual that;s quite a success, but for an actual small developer that’s not a whole lot especially after sales trail off over the following months. Then again, perhaps the revenue figures for apps grow exponentially as you go further up the Top App list.
I have a hard time betting against anything that both Apple and Kleiner Perkins are fully behind with multi-million dollar investments.
Not bad considering they’re probably a small shop in a competitive space. Last I checked there were at least 26 applications in the App Store just to help people figure out how to tip, some of them available for free. That number doesn’t include any of the calculator apps. I listed them on my site because I was shocked to find out how many people need help calculating 15% – 20%. Click if you want to see a list of tipping apps as of about two weeks ago.
http://www.kung...p-and-cant-add/
Impressive
the 30% cut Apple gets is more than a pimp receives from his whores. Apple should be no more than 15%. imho
Whores get 0% Pimp gets 100% you need to watch your Hughes brother documentaries.
At least they provide the developer a brainless distribution system. If you look at what it takes to get a BREW cell phone game out in the industry, you will be giving away over 50% most likely to a distributor who sells to the cell phone companies, who both take cuts.
Some people just develop and apple provided an excellent system really for single or small developer teams of 2 or 3 people to make some serious money, and not need to go through a lot of business stuff they don’t want to be concerned with.
Nigel – For verizon those numbers are worst if you are a small developer. IF you can get you work through you get to keep 35% or less. So far the App Store has been straight across the board with it’s fees.
This is a good start I guess. It shows that iPhone customers are willing to buy apps and developers can start breaking even soon.
You should change your name to iPhoneCrunch
The Tipulator… that’s a very very unfortunate name in some languages, a trip to the urban dictionary will explain it
Other than that, am I the only one thinking of Morty Seinfeld’s ‘tip calculator’ here?
“Tipulator isn’t defined yet.”
Now what?
But they have basically double monetized their whereto application. They could feature certain chains higher then others if they paid, or offer coupon services with the whereto’s.
I don’t get why you would want to go through all the work of offering free+ ad services when you don’t have too. Most programmers don’t know crap about advertising, and they don’t need to hire someone to do it for them. Charging someone $2.99 is simple money in. Seriously, keep it simple.
I guess you want the 50,000,000 downloads for your app with no monitization though, and then sell the app for some inflated value to some investor, but that still isn’t a good business.
well that pretty much true right there
test post
Isn’t the real question “how much did it cost to develop?”. Then we’d see ROI relative to other channels or opportunities to promote.
Does anyone remember the days of high quality shareware? When individual authors made a living making a single “killer app” for a niche and charging $10-30 for it?
I hope those days come back!
for real! i hope apple wises up and does away with these crap apps. they should only allow quality apps. it really makes the iphone come off like an off brand pc company. i deleted all the free apps after a few days as they are really useless junk.
If there are 3,168 idiots who need a tip calculator and are willing to pay a dollar for it, I am sure that this platform will be able to rope in all kinds of idiots with all kinds of other nonsensical apps.
As a business teacher once said to me: “Every day, millions of idiots wake up, if you can just make $0.99 from 3,168 of them in a month, you can become rich”. OK, I kind of adopted his saying a little, but you get the point!
My new app idea: The Bank Account Decimator – only $24.99. Purpose: To teach you a lesson. Support your education and buy this splendid product!
Didn’t you follow the news? we already had the I AM RICH application that just displayed a graphic and cost $999.99, 8 people bought it.
Marc, if you think you are so smart and other people are idiots, why not to demonstrate it by actually creating some commercially successful app? You can aim it at “idiots” if you want to.
“The real money in the App Store may well lie in monetizing these free applications, be it through integrated advertising or downloadable content (though it remains to be seen what restrictions Apple will place on this kind of strategy).”
This is already being done. Twitterrific is free with ads or pay and ad free. Apple so far has no problems.
Not too shabby for sales numbers for the first month… that’s 600,000 dollars in revenue for the year, if they were to receive the same amount of purchases for the rest of the year. The interesting thing will be to see how many more iphones are purchased monthly, after the first month of sales, and also how many apps will be purchased by these new iphone users. Remember, you only have to purchase the app once. Its not a subscription service… look here.. http://www.John....htm?s=hiac2008
“The real money in the App Store may well lie in monetizing these free applications, be it through integrated advertising or downloadable content”
Real money? I guess as opposed to the fake money they are getting now. To put this in context, they have MADE more in one month than many of the startups on TC.com are funded in their first year.
just think if this dev prived it at 4.99 they would have made alot more.
“The real money in the App Store may well lie in monetizing these free applications, be it through integrated advertising or downloadable content”
lol you mean like all the money facebook.com is generating on their free site?