This Is Why iPhone Developers Put Up With All the Bullshit From Apple | Hacker News Reader

This Is Why iPhone Developers Put Up With All the Bullshit From Apple

daringfireball.net

46 pointssant0sk123 comments

Trism is currently the 63rd top selling iPhone game. Granted the "top apps" seem to be heavily weighted towards recently popular applications, but let's do a little "fuzzy" math:

Assuming the price has remained constant and $250k is the figure before Apple takes their cut, $250,000 divided by the $5 unit price is approximately 50,000 units sold. Trism has about 400 reviews, which means about 1 in 120 users actually reviewed it.

Assuming apps with similar price and rating get approximately the same number of reviews per units sold (a big assumption, but this is fuzzy math...) we can extrapolate sales for other apps.

   App                 Cost   Rating   Reviews    Revenue

   -----------------   ----   ------   -------    -------

   Asphalt 4           $10      4       ~1000    ~$1.2 million

   Crash Bandicoot     $10      4       ~1200    ~$1.4 million

   Super Monkey Ball   $10      3.5     ~2900    ~$3.5 million

I would guess that apps with lower ratings have a higher ratio of reviews to sales (dissatisfied customers are more likely to voice their opinion), so these estimates are probably on the high side.

Still, I think it's pretty clear that there are iPhone apps that have made millions of dollars.

I'm a happy customer of A4 and CB, and I'd love to spend $10-20 on more games of that caliber.

It might be like facebook apps at the begginning, they were new and cool so alot of people browsed the app directory and since there were few apps, new apps could be noticed and grew

As the app store grows, it might be much harder if your app is buried in the app store somewhere to draw these kinds of sales.

But maybe the app store will accomodate this somehow.

While there is a lot of clutter on the app store with Tip calculators and so forth, there is a sharp difference between fB and iPhone platforms.

to develop for Facebook, you can use anything. to develop for the iPhone, you need a Mac.

That said, let's compare PC vs. Mac market share. :)

That right there almost makes me wanna buy a new iPhone just for it.

Almost. While the iPhone certainly gives game developers entirely new game control dimensions to work with, it's still too expensive in my books. As for the iPod touch, I'm just waiting for them to pack in enough storage for my whole library, and then I'm there.

My wife and my son has one, and I have the same AT&T service on a Razr. I get far better reception. Their calls drop ALOT--way more than I could tolerate. The other features work pretty well, but it seems the iphone is good at everything except being a phone.

I have to say, I'm an iPhone user living in Houston, Texas, and AT&T was just a little worse than my former carrier during normal times, but now that we're on a disaster recovery footing, their service stinks! Even two days before the storm, EGDE was unavailable for me to get traffic info like I always get before my return commute. There were also lots of dropped calls, calls whose service degraded until I couldn't understand what the other party was saying, and missed calls that never rang even though I had my phone. The only thing that kept reasonable service consistently throughout was SMS text. I guess that's to be expected during times like this.

It's all those Texas mountains blocking the signal.

What I really want is the ipod touch with GPS and force feedback for the keyboard. That's the killer device I'm waiting for Apple to bring to market. I don't want to pay "upkeep" for a portable usually-connected-online device.

It's a problem for every carrier.. I've been trying to call my friends on t-mobile and sprint, and have received the same issues. (I live in Austin, family in houston)

That is some crazy shit

How much did it cost to make?

I think with Android the 'pond' will be much larger and will make $250K look quaint.

So Android phones are going to outsell iPhones?

If everyone adopts Android, then sure!

It's a tough call, but note that the iPhone is not the smartphone market leader -- Blackberry is. Android could outsell iPhones solely by cannibalizing Blackberry sales, although it obviously has other opportunities: Windows mobile users, Palm users, people who want something like the iPhone but don't want to switch to AT&T, etc.

people who want something like the iPhone but don't want to switch to AT&T

That's gotta be the first big target. I'm on USCellular + iPod Touch for that very reason.

I'm confused, why would you pick US Cellular over AT&T?

Cheaper plans, better coverage (in Chicago suburbs), friendlier salespeople, better contract terms, lower cancellation fee, etc.

So Android phones are going to outsell iPhones?

The one coming out next week? No.

The hundreds that will come out over the years to come? Yes.

I wouldn't be so sure. The iPod outsold hundreds of mp3 players.

It didn't cost him anything (I met him at iPhoneDevCamp a month or so ago), and he did it part time (I think his first iteration took 2 weeks) while holding down a full time job.

The second video on his site says that it took him "many months" full time.

When I met him a month ago, he was still working full time. Perhaps I misunderstood him.

I think he had worked 4 months on the app during evenings and weekends, and his first iteration (in time for GDC I think) took about 2 weeks.

I know Steve. He's a great guy. Has known my roommate for about 4 years.

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