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There are some issues with the numbers in this post: Thus, when Dominique revealed to Ellis Hamburger in August 2011 that Sparrow had made at least $350k in it

There are some issues with the numbers in this post: Thus, when Dominique revealed to Ellis Hamburger in August 2011 that Sparrow had made at least $350k in it’s first 6 months in the Mac App Store, they had already been working at least a year on the app. The article actually states they made over half a million in the first 6 months DL: In terms of numbers we've made more than half a million dollars in the past six months since Sparrow was introduced in February. I don’t currently have an app in the Mac App Store, so it’s hard for me to estimate sales, but I’d bet the Mac version isn’t generating much more revenue, even at the higher $9.99 price point. I do. You really can't take iOS App Store sales trends and extrapolate them to the Mac App Store, the markets are quite different. 1. Sparrow is first and foremost a Mac app, and its target demographic is (or was) Mac users. The iOS version is supplementary. Without the ability to do push on iOS they wouldn't have been able to deliver as great of a user experience on iOS anyway. I would bet that the vast majority of their sales actually come from the Mac version. 2. Mac apps don't drop out of visibility nearly as quickly as they do on the iOS App Store. Part of this is because it takes a LOT more effort to produce a quality Mac app compared to an iOS app. 3. The Mac version of Sparrow has been pretty consistently in the Top 50 Grossing on the Mac App Store since launch[1]. I would be surprised if they weren't averaging at least $1000-1500/day on sales of the Mac app alone, with much higher spikes when they hit the Top 10 Grossing. That said, I will agree that whatever they were making was probably not sustainable for a team of 5, especially compared to the $25M that Google was offering. [1] http://www.appannie.com/app/mac/sparrow/ranking/history/#view=grossing-ranks&start_date=2011-01-01&end_date=2012-07-20 http://www.appannie.com/app/mac/sparrow/ranking/history/#vie...

snowch 14y ago
350k is the net after Apple's 30% cut.
- stevenwei 14y ago
  Hm, I suppose that's a possible explanation. Although since the sales reports provided by Apple already include the 30% cut, I'm more used to developers reporting their net revenues. And the original quote says "we've made more than half a million dollars", which to me implies that's after Apple's cut, and how much they're actually taking home.

snowch 14y ago

350k is the net after Apple's 30% cut.

stevenwei 14y ago
Hm, I suppose that's a possible explanation. Although since the sales reports provided by Apple already include the 30% cut, I'm more used to developers reporting their net revenues. And the original quote says "we've made more than half a million dollars", which to me implies that's after Apple's cut, and how much they're actually taking home.