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Comment by zack12 | Hacker News Reader

Can anybody spread some light on the business model they are trying to follow? I know they sell software, but with a single software for $29 and few employees. They need to sell quite a few licenses to make it.

I know its an ignorant statement, but can anybody explain it to me.

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Pixelmator sells very well, in their first 20 days on the Mac Store they grossed $1 million.

http://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2011/01/25/pixelmator-grosses...

Not Apple level of sales, but if your development team is small and focussed, it's pretty good.

I'm also curious how well this will work in the long run. Apple doesn't have a good model for paid upgrades on the app store and so far they've refused to implement anything to deal with it.

They've made enough money at this point that they could just tell all their developers to work on whatever they wanted and they'd still be well off in the medium term.

Their next big product should be a good standalone vector engine app that people can replace Illustrator with. That'd save a lot of designers I know several hundred dollars a year. Especially with Adobe's cloud stuff getting more and more mandatory…

They sell millions of licenses a year. Their revenue per employee exceeds that of Google or Apple.

Is more explanation needed?

Do you have a source for those numbers? I have no reason to doubt you, but you seem put off by the question. It's a legitimate concern before sending money to a company to ask how financially secure they are.

I was put off by the idea they needed a business model other than selling the app for money.

A little googling should provide the due diligence you require.

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