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His entire analysis is basically taking the revenue total for all apps, divided by the number of apps, and saying each developer only makes an average of $3k pe
by illumin8 16y ago
His entire analysis is basically taking the revenue total for all apps, divided by the number of apps, and saying each developer only makes an average of $3k per year. Sorry, this is not a good analysis. Some people give their apps away for free. Some quality apps make millions. This doesn't mean the opportunities are not there.
A similar analysis could be done of PC shareware software authors, with similar results.
- jroes 16y agoHe has data that indicates 73% of total apps on the store are paid. He then bases his remaining calculations on that paid app number.
- wallflower 16y agoCount of total apps paid compared with Count of total apps free has probably very little correlation with app store revenues. The best case (equal sharing) isn't realistic, as we all know that some apps generate hundreds of thousands of dollars over their lifetime. > So the best case of how few apps get to divide that 1.43 Billion dollars over the past 2 years, is 164,000 actual apps
- metageek 16y agoYeah, but he doesn't take into account the fact that 73% of apps do not get 73% of the downloads.
- sorbus 16y agoHowever, paid apps do get all of the purchases. The number of downloads doesn't matter, only income does.
- smokey_the_bear 16y agoFree apps have in app purchases, and ads. Some developers do very well off of free apps.
- sorbus 16y agoAds, until the introduction of iAds, would not have gone through apple, and therefor would not count towards total revenue. You do have a point with in app purchases, but I doubt that they would significantly skew the numbers - they would make them worse for developers of paid apps, in fact. Given the other optimistic decisions the article has when dealing with numbers, I think that ignoring in app purchases fits with it: it's a best case scenario for paid apps. It would be quite interesting to see how much money has been made through in app purchases, though. Not merely anecdotes, but the percentage of free apps which have in app purchases, and the average/median income through in app purchases in those apps.
- chops 16y agoNope, that's not what it is. He explicitly states that he excludes the free apps in the revenue analysis. He uses a combination of numbers from Apple and from other 3rd party services to come to the median revenue per paid app at something like $680/year. He also fully acknowledges that there are some extreme examples that make it big, but that half of all paid apps are currently making less than $680/year. This is a pretty thorough analysis.