App Store Earnings For Developers Exceed $70 Billion; App Downloads Up 70% YoY (macstories.net)

Apple announced today that since it launched in 2008, developers have earned over $70 billion from the App Store. From an article: "People everywhere love apps and our customers are downloading them in record numbers," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "Seventy billion dollars earned by developers is simply mind-blowing." According to Apple's press release, subscriptions saw a 58 percent increase year over year, fueled by their availability in all 25 app categories. Games and Entertainment are the App Store's top grossing categories, Lifestyle and Health and Fitness apps have experienced 70 percent growth, and the Photo and Video category is up over 90 percent.

Comments

This is why Blackberry lost the smartphone wars

[mykepredko]

When I was at RIM, the iPhone 4 came out with one of the benefits for buyers was the extensive library of apps that were available for download. The iPhone SDK was free or a very nominal cost. To develop an app for the Blackberry at the time required an expensive SDK as well as a costly testing process to make sure the app met their standards.

RIM at the time (and I talked about this with very senior executives) made it clear that the way Apple was doing would destroy Apple as professionals wouldn't want something which had unvetted and, to their eye, silly apps.

Re:Note that this is all in aggregate

[BarbaraHudson]

I'm glad you asked. It's easy to calculate what the average is for those who aren't in the top 1,000.

$70 billion 2.2 million current apps gives 31k per app per 9 years. say 3.5 k per year. Now you have to deduct for apps that used to be in the store but are no more, so let's be generous and say the rate of attrition is 50% over the last 9 years (it's probably much higher). That means the average app makes $1.75 k per year.

So let's be nice again, and say that the top 1,000 apps take 90% of the revenue (it's probably much more). That leaves the 4.4 million apps (we have to include those that are no longer there, remember?) to split $7 billion over 9 years, or $1,509 each over 9 years, which works out to $176 a year.

So, how many apps does the average app developer have to crank out to make $10 an hour ($20,800 per year) for a 40 hour week (260 days, no 2 weeks holiday for YOU!) You would need to crank out 118 apps in 260 working 8-hour days in a year..That's more than 2 apps a day. With no money left for overhead, income tax, etc., and no time or budget for promoting your app or support.

Most app devs are either suckers or they've got a customer who is a sucker.

And remember, this is an average. Half will be making less than $10 an hour pumping out 118 apps a year.