4 ms·

Top 20% of iPhone devs make 97% of the category revenue

33 points by rkalla 15y ago

rkalla 15y ago
Additionally: The top 1 percent of iOS game developers earn over a third of all that cold, digital revenue. In contrast, the bottom 80 percent of iOS devs are splitting a mere 3 percent of all App Store game revenue between one another. The parallel with the current state of wealth in America[1] is interesting. I feel like there is something, sociologically, to be said there but I have no idea what it is. Put another way: "This behavior of the top 1% capturing a huge portion of the environment to themselves is mirrored in our wealth as well... why does this pattern re-occur?" [1] http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
- Cmccann7 15y ago
  It's called the "Power Law" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law You also hear a lot about the top 20% taking 80% of the gains which is a special case of the power law called Pareto Distribution > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution You see these same distribution patterns occur all over the place in economics, biology, chemistry, etc.
  - rkalla 15y ago
    Ah! Chris thanks for the links, that is exactly what I was looking for more info on.
- wbracken 15y ago
  Maybe we should tax the top 1% of game devs to support all other game devs.
  - rkalla 15y ago
    haha, this comment is like a pile of kindling, covered with some lighter fuel and you laid some matches down next to it JUST incase anyone wanted to engage :)
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - jbooth 15y ago
    1/10 troll. Needs references to "socialism" or "Nobama". Bonus points if you can work in 3 of 'socialism', 'communism', 'fascism', 'islamism', 'rastafarianism'.
  - william42 15y ago
    That sort of amortization is how the publishing industry for books works, IIRC; most books lose money, but the few successful ones make up for it.
    - jaredsohn 15y ago
      An even better example would be game publishers. (But as others have noted, it applies to many industries. Venture capitalists who invest in startups is another example.)
tvon 15y ago
How does this differ from other software markets?
- z92 15y ago
  My guess is not much. Everyone will want to spend his money on best of the list, specially when all those are same priced. Thus the top 5% will garner all revenue while the rest will starve.
gte910h 15y ago
Numbers are interesting, however it's a small, non-representative survey. This is also just for games, not for other apps. Also, I'd probably consider this not very useful at all due to a survey defect that caused strange numbers: >"One of the things I really wanted data on was a snapshot of what the last 12 months have looked like for game developers on the App Store. However, the questions I created to gather this data clearly confused respondents. The intent was that devs enter only revenue from games released within the last 12 months, but many developers provided revenue from the last 12 months for all their games. This made the data I collected for these questions largely useless for the purposes I wanted. Further, most people didn’t understand the instructions and didn’t match the sales revenue to the non-sales revenue in the two questions, making drawing conclusions there impossible, also. You’ll see later on that I did manage to get some basic data from it, but couldn’t do the detailed analysis I had hoped for."
- alperakgun 15y ago
  yes but they are useful, or does anyone else know better stats how much mobile developers earn? apparently majority of mobile app developers don't earn enough money to cover their opportunity costs or development costs.
  - gte910h 15y ago
    What is a mobile developer? Someone who spends 2 weeknights worth working on an app? Or a guy who does nothing but that for months, hiring full quality artists, etc. I think the issue is many mobile apps aren't fully baked ideas implemented with the full range of work.
jbooth 15y ago
I'm actually surprised that this isn't even more pronounced. Zero marginal production cost, while the long tail is very long. If I'm buying 10 apps, I'm just gonna buy the best 10 and ignore the rest.
mikepmalai 15y ago
Not surprising. The 80-20 (or 90-10) rule (top 10 to 20% of paying customers account for 80 to 90% of your revenues) applies to all sorts of businesses.
extension 15y ago
20% seems way too high to me. I bet if you took a truly random sample, it would be less than 5%. But per app or per developer statistics don't really tell you anything except that the app store is saturated with junk. It's just noise, and there is a world of mechanisms to filter it out. The real interesting stat would be revenue per talent-hours or something, but obviously that is hard to measure objectively.
- rkalla 15y ago
  I wonder if a (rough enough) algorithm might be to filter all apps in the app store and only analyze apps that have more than 1k downloads then see what the profit split looks like so you (hopefully) filter out brand new apps that you don't care about, or junk apps that have been buried algorithmically by Apple already.
Woost 15y ago
The more interesting question here isn't "what % take in the most money" but what kind of money can you expect to see? As in, if you write an iphone/ipad app, what are the maximum returns you could see? It'd also be interesting to find out how much money has angry birds, or fruit ninja made off just the app store?(not counting merch sales) Additionally, how does it break down? (in app purchase/initial purchase, ad revenue, etc) Overall reports are interesting, but not that useful, since there is a ton of crap that no one in their right mind would buy...and if you're doing it as a business you wouldn't produce a product that low quality (we hope)

33 points by rkalla 15y ago

Additionally: The top 1 percent of iOS game developers earn over a third of all that cold, digital revenue. In contrast, the bottom 80 percent of iOS devs are splitting a mere 3 percent of all App Store game revenue between one another. The parallel with the current state of wealth in America[1] is interesting. I feel like there is something, sociologically, to be said there but I have no idea what it is. Put another way: "This behavior of the top 1% capturing a huge portion of the environment to themselves is mirrored in our wealth as well... why does this pattern re-occur?" [1] http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Cmccann7 15y ago
It's called the "Power Law" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law You also hear a lot about the top 20% taking 80% of the gains which is a special case of the power law called Pareto Distribution > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution You see these same distribution patterns occur all over the place in economics, biology, chemistry, etc.
- rkalla 15y ago
  Ah! Chris thanks for the links, that is exactly what I was looking for more info on.
wbracken 15y ago
Maybe we should tax the top 1% of game devs to support all other game devs.
- rkalla 15y ago
  haha, this comment is like a pile of kindling, covered with some lighter fuel and you laid some matches down next to it JUST incase anyone wanted to engage :)
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- jbooth 15y ago
  1/10 troll. Needs references to "socialism" or "Nobama". Bonus points if you can work in 3 of 'socialism', 'communism', 'fascism', 'islamism', 'rastafarianism'.
- william42 15y ago
  That sort of amortization is how the publishing industry for books works, IIRC; most books lose money, but the few successful ones make up for it.
  - jaredsohn 15y ago
    An even better example would be game publishers. (But as others have noted, it applies to many industries. Venture capitalists who invest in startups is another example.)

tvon 15y ago

How does this differ from other software markets?

z92 15y ago
My guess is not much. Everyone will want to spend his money on best of the list, specially when all those are same priced. Thus the top 5% will garner all revenue while the rest will starve.

gte910h 15y ago

Numbers are interesting, however it's a small, non-representative survey. This is also just for games, not for other apps. Also, I'd probably consider this not very useful at all due to a survey defect that caused strange numbers: >"One of the things I really wanted data on was a snapshot of what the last 12 months have looked like for game developers on the App Store. However, the questions I created to gather this data clearly confused respondents. The intent was that devs enter only revenue from games released within the last 12 months, but many developers provided revenue from the last 12 months for all their games. This made the data I collected for these questions largely useless for the purposes I wanted. Further, most people didn’t understand the instructions and didn’t match the sales revenue to the non-sales revenue in the two questions, making drawing conclusions there impossible, also. You’ll see later on that I did manage to get some basic data from it, but couldn’t do the detailed analysis I had hoped for."

alperakgun 15y ago
yes but they are useful, or does anyone else know better stats how much mobile developers earn? apparently majority of mobile app developers don't earn enough money to cover their opportunity costs or development costs.
- gte910h 15y ago
  What is a mobile developer? Someone who spends 2 weeknights worth working on an app? Or a guy who does nothing but that for months, hiring full quality artists, etc. I think the issue is many mobile apps aren't fully baked ideas implemented with the full range of work.

jbooth 15y ago

I'm actually surprised that this isn't even more pronounced. Zero marginal production cost, while the long tail is very long. If I'm buying 10 apps, I'm just gonna buy the best 10 and ignore the rest.

mikepmalai 15y ago

Not surprising. The 80-20 (or 90-10) rule (top 10 to 20% of paying customers account for 80 to 90% of your revenues) applies to all sorts of businesses.

extension 15y ago

20% seems way too high to me. I bet if you took a truly random sample, it would be less than 5%. But per app or per developer statistics don't really tell you anything except that the app store is saturated with junk. It's just noise, and there is a world of mechanisms to filter it out. The real interesting stat would be revenue per talent-hours or something, but obviously that is hard to measure objectively.

rkalla 15y ago
I wonder if a (rough enough) algorithm might be to filter all apps in the app store and only analyze apps that have more than 1k downloads then see what the profit split looks like so you (hopefully) filter out brand new apps that you don't care about, or junk apps that have been buried algorithmically by Apple already.

Woost 15y ago

The more interesting question here isn't "what % take in the most money" but what kind of money can you expect to see? As in, if you write an iphone/ipad app, what are the maximum returns you could see? It'd also be interesting to find out how much money has angry birds, or fruit ninja made off just the app store?(not counting merch sales) Additionally, how does it break down? (in app purchase/initial purchase, ad revenue, etc) Overall reports are interesting, but not that useful, since there is a ton of crap that no one in their right mind would buy...and if you're doing it as a business you wouldn't produce a product that low quality (we hope)