

The average iOS app - rythie
http://daveaddey.com/?p=893

======
adrianhon
When it comes to games, originality is a crucial factor that's frequently
overlooked. It's difficult for indie devs to compete against licensed
properties (e.g. Temple Run: Brave) or against freemium games that can throw a
lot of money on user acquisition. Creating truly original or interesting games
is one way to compete against them. Unfortunately, the typical reaction is to
just do a spin on high grossing casual games (e.g. Fruit Ninja) leading to a
price war and generally low revenues.

When we made our running game, Zombies, Run!, we had absolutely no interest in
competing with the freemium or 99c games - we don't have the properties or
resources to do that. Instead, we made a game that straddles the fitness,
gaming, and storytelling genres. We also charged $7.99, making it the most
expensive game in the Top 200 Grossing today (even more expensive than
Minecraft).

Part of the reason why we can do this is because we basically have no
competitors - although obviously that made it a little harder to educate the
market. I'm sure we will get competition, but the skills required to make the
game (iOS dev, web dev, award-winning author, voice actors, sound producers,
community support) are not trivial to find and organise.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, people _will_ pay for an app that they think
is original and worthwhile, and not just on iOS but Android as well (we're
very happy with our Android sales).

~~~
debacle
I completely disagree. Angry Birds, quite possibly the most successful mobile
game to date, is a completely unoriginal title that just looks prettier than
most of its competitors.

You cannot simply attribute your success to originality, without looking at
the other 650,000 apps and ranking them by originality as well, and then
correlating that with success.

I would predict that originality falls behind a large handful of other factors
when it comes to calculating the success of a mobile game. I would not be
surprised if originality was not a statistically significant factor in a
game's success.

~~~
jcromartie
Angry Birds was the first game of its kind that _tons of people actually
played_. The fact that it looks prettier than the competitors is the reason
_why_ people actually played it. They pulled an Apple.

If there is an original game out there that is not catching on, it's likely
that you can take it and do it better, and finally get traction. This still
means it's an original game _to the players_.

------
brudgers
What the analysis is missing, in my opinion, is sufficient emphasis on the age
of the iOS App Store. Not only has the $5 billion has been paid out over four
years - meaning even a 1% app won't necessarily replace a decent job in a
Western European country or the US - but also that much of that 1% has
probably gone to apps that are no longer in existence due to changes to the
approval process, the developer agreement, the API, or simply the maturing
marketplace - i.e. 650k represents the current number of apps in the
marketplace not the total number of apps which have offered over the past four
years.

That's not to say the analysis isn't a useful back of envelope calculation.
Because what it shows is that the economics of the app store probably favor
developing many lower quality apps in places with low cost of living - places
where a few hundred dollars is significant income.

~~~
Dn_Ab
The article is not clear on this. But the data from the image is unrelated to
the stat of 5 billion. The data was compiled over 7 days from 252 respondent 1
year ago. From that data, the median life time revenue of an app is about
$3,000 and the distribution on revenue is a long tailed one. The OP is also
misleading in that you can't assume a uniform distribution in each bucket.
Quite likely the same uneven long tailedness would appear at each level.

[http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2011/09/28/results-
ios-g...](http://www.streamingcolour.com/blog/2011/09/28/results-ios-game-
revenue-survey/)

~~~
brudgers
The article is pretty clear. The income distribution data in the image is
extrapolated across the entire App Store.

 _"Before reading the rest of this post, bear in mind that these numbers are
not necessarily accurate, and may not be representative of other categories in
the App Store. However, if they were representative, the back of our napkin
would give a very different split from the default assumed position:"_

    
    
        1% of apps (6,500) would be sharing 36% of revenue 
          ($1.75bn), i.e. an average of $269,230 per app
        19% of apps (123,500) would be sharing 61% of revenue 
          ($3.05bn), i.e. an average of $24,696 per app
        80% of apps (520,000) would be sharing 3% of revenue 
          ($150m), i.e. an average of $288 per app

~~~
Dn_Ab
Sorry you're right, on that aspect I was mistaken. But the caveats listed in
the thread and the weakness of the assumption of a uniform distribution in
each bucket makes it difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions beyond what
the original article had. That is, I don't think the mean is useful at any
level.

------
cageface
_19% of apps (123,500) would be sharing 61% of revenue ($3.05bn), i.e. an
average of $24,696 per app._

So, as a skilled iOS developer you can get a salaried job or work on contract
and _easily_ pull down $100k/year.

Or, you can bank on hitting 4 near home runs a year with your own apps.

Which sounds like the smart bet?

~~~
DominikR
For me, this not an IF-ELSE question since you could do both.

Furthermore you aquire many new skills while doing so, which will make you
more employable and thus increases your future income.

~~~
cageface
Sure. Having a few apps in the store makes it a lot easier to land a job or a
client.

Just don't bet your mortgage on app revenue.

------
jmacdotorg
As someone exploring the prospect of app sales as a career (working on my
third app now, supplementing it with consulting work), I'm quite heartened by
this article. There's a tenacious belief within the indie game-dev circles I
bump around in that the _only_ way to profit from iOS sales is to win the top-
ten lottery and join the 1% this article describes.

But the real story that Addey tells here says that Sturgeon's Law is in full
effect in the App Store: if you can make your app _not crap_, if you can rise
above the dross that inevitably makes up 80 to 90 percent of any sizable
collection of creative work, then people will buy it. And if you're willing to
act wisely and keep working at it, always pushing out more quality, care-
driven stuff, then you can succeed.

This is what I want to do.

------
chubs
There really seems to be a meme at the moment for stories about how difficult
it is to make money on the iOS / Mac app store. Ever since the sparrow
acquisition, it seems like every day there's another similar story on the
front page of HN about how hard it is to make money there. Which,
unfortunately for me, is quite discouraging because i'm about to launch an
iPhone app in a week :(

~~~
whileonebegin
Making iphone apps used to be good a few years ago when the store first
opened. Not so much now. Earning $0.70 per sale is just not enough. And that's
if your app can even be found. It's even worse with Android. With mobile
overtaking PCs, it's a slightly depressing thought about the direction the
software industry has taken.

------
pooriaazimi
There are "tons" of free apps on the App Store. Either completely, honest to
God free, or ad-supported (usually from Google, so they're not paid by
Apple)...

------
olalonde
I wonder what the numbers would look like if we did the same calculations for
websites instead of apps. Of course, it would be practically impossible to do
but I bet that at least 99% of revenues would come from <1% of websites.

------
hodgesmr
"1% of apps were making 36% of the revenue." Occupy the App Store.

------
herval
Two things:

1\. The calculation averages the gains throughout ALL apps - given the vast
majority of the apps are free, that means the paid ones are getting a lot more
revenue (individually)

2\. It doesn't take into consideration advertising revenues (admob et all),
which represent a considerable chunk of revenue for a lot of apps...

------
sjwright
I think these results look great. Does anyone who's browsed the App Store
really think that more than 1 in 5 paid games are even vaguely compelling? No,
most of them are rubbish. The real story is, if these statistics are to be
accepted, that there's _one hundred thousand games_ earning real money. I'm
genuinely impressed.

------
akurilin
Power law at work?

------
fpgeek
This doesn't seem to factor out the truly/intentionally free apps (i.e. no
charge and no IAP). Doesn't that make the number of apps in each category too
high and, hence, the revenue per app too low?

~~~
cageface
It does. Read the linked study. These are all non-free games.

------
gioele
Paraphrasing Tim Bray, selling bags of bits is probably not a good business
model for most of the people. (Unless you have draconian DRM measures in
places.)

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jiggy2011
How much does quality matter in terms of iOS marketshare? Or is it mainly
marketing driven?

For example, if I have time but not money and invest lots of time into
creating a high quality iOS app for a niche market does it stand a chance or
rising to the top or will it simply fall into obscurity without being featured
by apple etc?

~~~
cageface
The app market is _extremely_ competitive now. You need a quality app _and_ a
serious marketing effort to make real money. Just tossing an app up on the
store among 600k other contenders isn't going to get you far.

------
eevilspock
Not sure why this is surprising. If we could take out the apps that didn't try
to make money (or could somehow run an experiment where all apps were paid), I
wouldn't be surprised if the revenue distribution followed the 80-20 rule.

