Good article and its nice to see people acknowledging the hype around the app store. I have been doing iphone development almost exclusively since november. This includes writing 3 of my own apps and contracting on two others.

I was encouraged by the success of my first app to write others. I spent a month or two working on my next app and it barely made a dent. I think I've finally made the money back i paid the graphic designer.

Another app I made in two days pulled in a couple thousand bucks over the course of a couple weeks. Go figure.

I think the take home point is that its really hit or miss and that success doesn't correlate with quality. I would be reluctant to recommend working on iphone apps full time to anyone unless you're prolific enough to overcome the poor odds of success.

I think a lot of this has to do with the way the app store is set up. The author hit the nail on the head pointing out the importance of being on the top 100 lists. Really, if you aren't on there you are invisible to buyers.

OTOH, selling iphone apps is a lot easier than selling desktop software. And its pretty fun. I definitely recommend it as a hobby and if/when i decide to get a 'real job' I'll probably keep making apps.