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Quick math on the iOS app economy: > The app revolution has added more than 210,000 iOS jobs to the U.S. economy since the introduction of iPhone in 2007 > Ap

by SeoxyS 15y ago

Quick math on the iOS app economy: > The app revolution has added more than 210,000 iOS jobs to the U.S. economy since the introduction of iPhone in 2007 > Apple has paid more than $4 billion in royalties to developers through the App Store The app store has been around since summer '08, so let's say it's been around for 3.5 years. $4B / 210,000 / 3.5 = $5442.17 per annum Converted to an hourly wage, that's $2.62/hr (or $454 monthly). Way below minimum wage. Either Apple has some funky math going on here, or they've created 210k very crappy jobs. Note: I'm ignoring Advertising and B2B revenue here, so when you factor that in I'm sure the gross product jumps quite a bit. Still, Apple ignores that part of the market as well, so either they should publish a gross product for the iOS economy, or they're leading me to the conclusion above.

pooriaazimi 15y ago
Some notes, on why I think your calculation while interesting, is way off: 1. You shouldn't consider summer 2008 as epoch. 2. Not all of those $4B were paid to US developers (I'd guess less than 60% of that) 3. A huge number of apps (thousands) on the App Store are free (from Google, Facebook, Amazon, Zynga, ...) - For all we know, all such free apps have been created by a team of 10-15 iOS developers/testers/etc. I'm also skeptical about the claim, but I think that your calculation wasn't a good one.
- b0sk 15y ago
  Well. in actuality the $4B is paid according to Pareto distribution ( Pareto principle). That means a small chunk of developers with highly successful apps are going to get a large chunk of that $4B. This makes Apple's claim actually worse.
ktsmith 15y ago
Their number of registered developers and jobs from iOS is probably also skewed by failing to remove inactive developers.
joelrunyon 15y ago
You're also failing to account for revenue created through the ad platforms on the free apps. I imagine that'd be a sizeable chunk that's not included in the 4B figure.

by SeoxyS 15y ago

pooriaazimi 15y ago

Some notes, on why I think your calculation while interesting, is way off: 1. You shouldn't consider summer 2008 as epoch. 2. Not all of those $4B were paid to US developers (I'd guess less than 60% of that) 3. A huge number of apps (thousands) on the App Store are free (from Google, Facebook, Amazon, Zynga, ...) - For all we know, all such free apps have been created by a team of 10-15 iOS developers/testers/etc. I'm also skeptical about the claim, but I think that your calculation wasn't a good one.

b0sk 15y ago
Well. in actuality the $4B is paid according to Pareto distribution ( Pareto principle). That means a small chunk of developers with highly successful apps are going to get a large chunk of that $4B. This makes Apple's claim actually worse.

ktsmith 15y ago

Their number of registered developers and jobs from iOS is probably also skewed by failing to remove inactive developers.

joelrunyon 15y ago

You're also failing to account for revenue created through the ad platforms on the free apps. I imagine that'd be a sizeable chunk that's not included in the 4B figure.