
This Is Why iPhone Developers Put Up With All the Bullshit From Apple - sant0sk1
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2008/09/18/trism
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tlrobinson
Trism is currently the 63rd top selling iPhone game. Granted the "top apps"
seem to be heavily weighted towards recently popular applications, but let's
do a little "fuzzy" math:

Assuming the price has remained constant and $250k is the figure before Apple
takes their cut, $250,000 divided by the $5 unit price is approximately 50,000
units sold. Trism has about 400 reviews, which means about 1 in 120 users
actually reviewed it.

Assuming apps with similar price and rating get approximately the same number
of reviews per units sold (a big assumption, but this is fuzzy math...) we can
extrapolate sales for other apps.

    
    
       App                 Cost   Rating   Reviews    Revenue
    
       -----------------   ----   ------   -------    -------
    
       Asphalt 4           $10      4       ~1000    ~$1.2 million
    
       Crash Bandicoot     $10      4       ~1200    ~$1.4 million
    
       Super Monkey Ball   $10      3.5     ~2900    ~$3.5 million
    

I would guess that apps with lower ratings have a higher ratio of reviews to
sales (dissatisfied customers are more likely to voice their opinion), so
these estimates are probably on the high side.

Still, I think it's pretty clear that there are iPhone apps that have made
millions of dollars.

~~~
pchristensen
I'm a happy customer of A4 and CB, and I'd love to spend $10-20 on more games
of that caliber.

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utnick
It might be like facebook apps at the begginning, they were new and cool so
alot of people browsed the app directory and since there were few apps, new
apps could be noticed and grew

As the app store grows, it might be much harder if your app is buried in the
app store somewhere to draw these kinds of sales.

But maybe the app store will accomodate this somehow.

~~~
pxlpshr
While there is a lot of clutter on the app store with Tip calculators and so
forth, there is a sharp difference between fB and iPhone platforms.

to develop for Facebook, you can use anything. to develop for the iPhone, you
need a Mac.

That said, let's compare PC vs. Mac market share. :)

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Audacitor
That right there almost makes me wanna buy a new iPhone just for it.

Almost. While the iPhone certainly gives game developers entirely new game
control dimensions to work with, it's still too expensive in my books. As for
the iPod touch, I'm just waiting for them to pack in enough storage for my
whole library, and then I'm there.

~~~
dhimes
My wife and my son has one, and I have the same AT&T service on a Razr. I get
far better reception. Their calls drop ALOT--way more than I could tolerate.
The other features work pretty well, but it seems the iphone is good at
everything except being a phone.

~~~
stcredzero
I have to say, I'm an iPhone user living in Houston, Texas, and AT&T was just
a little worse than my former carrier during normal times, but now that we're
on a disaster recovery footing, their service stinks! Even two days before the
storm, EGDE was unavailable for me to get traffic info like I always get
before my return commute. There were also lots of dropped calls, calls whose
service degraded until I couldn't understand what the other party was saying,
and missed calls that never rang even though I had my phone. The only thing
that kept reasonable service consistently throughout was SMS text. I guess
that's to be expected during times like this.

~~~
viae
It's all those Texas mountains blocking the signal.

What I really want is the ipod touch with GPS and force feedback for the
keyboard. That's the killer device I'm waiting for Apple to bring to market. I
don't want to pay "upkeep" for a portable usually-connected-online device.

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Psyonic
That is some crazy shit

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josefresco
How much did it cost to make?

I think with Android the 'pond' will be much larger and will make $250K look
quaint.

~~~
iron_ball
So Android phones are going to outsell iPhones?

~~~
jcl
It's a tough call, but note that the iPhone is not the smartphone market
leader -- Blackberry is. Android could outsell iPhones solely by cannibalizing
Blackberry sales, although it obviously has other opportunities: Windows
mobile users, Palm users, people who want something like the iPhone but don't
want to switch to AT&T, etc.

~~~
pchristensen
_people who want something like the iPhone but don't want to switch to AT &T_

That's gotta be the first big target. I'm on USCellular + iPod Touch for that
very reason.

~~~
cstejerean
I'm confused, why would you pick US Cellular over AT&T?

~~~
pchristensen
Cheaper plans, better coverage (in Chicago suburbs), friendlier salespeople,
better contract terms, lower cancellation fee, etc.

------
geuis
I know Steve. He's a great guy. Has known my roommate for about 4 years.

