So you’ve been running on iPhone 2.0 (hopefully, 2.0.1) for a while now. And you’ve all enjoyed the plethora of quality apps at the App Store, but did you know how well the App Store was actually doing? Well, according to one of those old reputable printing press companies, pretty darn well.
The App Store holds a current pace of earning a revenue of over a million dollars a day, which roughly translates to $360 million a year. Steve Jobs issued some resounding statements about the App Store saying,
“This thing’s going to crest a half a billion, soon,” he added. “Who knows, maybe it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time.” and also said, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my career for software”
Though the WSJ doesn’t believe Apple will be able to derive much profit in this current 70/30 split since they only make enough money to cover credit card transactions and maintaining the App Store itself, Jobs believes that having such a direct pipeline of apps will be able to sell more iPhones much like how iTunes enabled more sales of iPods.
So yeah, that App Store is doing great. Who would have thought an easy-to-use, iTunes-like interface would revolutionize the mobile software industry? Best of luck catching up RIM, WinMob, Android..
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For the last week or so I’ve been beta testing a well known iPhone application. Beta testing involves using the 100 iPhone “Ad Hoc” distribution method first outlined at WWDC 2008. I was planning on writing up the process, and my experiences being involved in it (all straightforward, all great — all definitely far more work for developers than testers) when, thankfully for all involved, one of the foremost iPhone devs, Craig Hockenberry of Twitteriffic fame, went and did it the way it should be done.
Interested in Ad Hoc distribution and how iPhone beta testing works? Get you to reading over at his site, Furbo.org.
Meanwhile, Erica Sadun over at TUAW presents a very well though out essay on how Apple could (and should?) improve the App review process with more objectivity, consistency, and transparency.
In [redacted] NDA land, John Gruber over at Daring Fireball offers an interesting theory, via a reader: what if it’s all about patent protection? Seems Apple might start the clock ticking when the NDA is lifted, and the technology gets published, and their lawyers may not have all the dots and crosses in place yet.
Finally, is it time to put BoxOffice on a milk carton yet?
As Rene just mentioned in the previous post, we’re getting sales numbers for various iPhone apps and these sales numbers are very, very promising. John Casasanta of development house Tap Tap Tap hit us up on our tip line about his article on the sales figures at the App Store.
Early on, folks in the Blogosphere were able to get a handle on sales figures simply by checking the download count at the bottom of each page. Apple apparently decided that developers might just want to keep some of that info private, so that was taken down around the same time that Apple started actually delivering real sales numbers to developers. Many of these developers, as Rene mentioned, are just going ahead and publishing these sales numbers despite, as Casasanta says, traditional business instincts to hide exact numbers because they don’t want to seem to be bragging or (if things aren’t going well), failing.
But these numbers are news because of their sheer size — it’s almost as if developers are compelled to share in the same way we might if we’d, say, won the lottery. “Look, I know it’s not nice to brag, but Holy Crap Look At This.”
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The iPhone App Store Avalanche continues, with seemingly dozens of new Apps popping up every day (though no word yet on NetShare or Box Office!), but as busy as things look out front, they’re just as busy behind the scenes.
So what’s going on? Business. It’s booming. (At least if your customers aren’t getting error codes -4 or 5002 when trying to access iTunes!) Apple began to report download stats to developers, and some developers have begun to share those stats with the blogsphere.
What do they say? Read on to find out!
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Box Office is missing. No, we’re not talking about the gross from the latest Eddie Murphy “film”, we’re talking about the iPhone App. While NetShare remains in its very own little Schrodinger’s App box, some carriers’ (AT&T, Rogers, etc.) prohibition against tethering and Nullriver’s Installer.app/Cydia roots makes the drama at least somewhat fathomable. What about Box Office?
Box Office is (was?) an App that used either manually entered or CoreLocation derived positional information to show you a list of theaters and movies playing within a user-definable radius (e.g. 10 miles). Users could “favorite” certain theaters to bump them to the top, and quickly click through the RottenTomatoes or MetaCrytic reviews, movie information, etc. In other words, it was a useful piece of software in the otherwise incredibly high noise to signal ratio (i.e. CrApps to quality) the initial App Store land rush has given us.
And now it’s gone.
Yup. For the last couple days, clicking on the Box Office link returns an iTunes error saying the app is not available in (your country) store. Posting on the MacRumors forums, developer Metasyntactic, claims not to know why it was pulled either (after the jump):
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It’s the end of July and there’s still plenty of summer left, so snow and avalanches are still many months away. Fortunately, any time of year is perfect for an App Avalanche, and there are always new and updated apps in the App Store for your iPhone. It’s time for App Avalanche 3!
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At the TechCrunch Mobile Web Wars event (basically a Silicon Valley roundtable discussion), the topic of conversation often turned towards, you guessed it, your favorite gadget, the iPhone. Many Execs were claiming that the traffic generated by the iPhone is extraordinary and the amount of apps downloaded in a matter of weeks are jaw-dropping.
Here are the notable facts and figures:
- Pandora has been available for 18 months in other mobile platforms which resulted in 12,000 monthly subscriptions to the service. In 6 days with the iPhone…350,000 installs on the iPhone.
- And before you cry foul because of the paid vs free debate, Pandora says that the App Store lets the company make money through ads whereas on other devices they were forced into a subscription method.
- 1 million Facebook users downloaded the Facebook App
- Average iPhone user is 47 times as active on Loopt as those on other phones
It wasn’t all cheery for the iPhone though, Vice President of S60 software technology management David Rivas continues to claim that his devices can do everything that the iPhone and also offers hundreds of millions of users to choose from. But Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous (TTR and Twinkle), fired back saying you need a “developer environment and a delivery channel” to capitalize on those users.
Right now the iPhone does. And everyone else doesn’t. Zing.
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Installer.app, the app store before that other app store, is coming back for firmware 2.0 and being re-fashioned as Installer 4. Currently, jailbroken 2.0 iPhones are using Cydia as their main app pipeline but when Installer 4 is released, well, they’ll likely play nice with one another and especially nice with that other app store.
The RiP Dev Blog has a lot of complicated, programmer’s type language describing the updates for Installer 4.0 so I’ll try to translate to more understandable, layman’s terms: It’s going to be faster, safer, and more integrated. Bang.
The release of Installer 4.0 seems to be imminent but well, really, there’s no rush, many of the apps that were available for 1.1.x aren’t quite ready for the big time yet. So take your time with Installer 4.0. We here at TiPb would almost always prefer a little delayed polished product over a rushed, rough, not as advertised..yeah, we’re looking at you MobileMe.
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During Apple’s Q3 Conference Call on Monday, Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook reported that, like the iTunes Store, App Store is not meant to generate revenue but to drive iPhone and iPod Touch sales. They’ve added 400 Apps to the 500 available at launch, bringing the total (at call time) to 900, though the percentage of FREE (as in beer, not speech) Apps has fallen from 25% (~125 at launch) to 20% (~180 now). Under $10 Apps remained constant at 90%. Seems like that’s the current magic ceiling for many developers. And with over 25 million downloads and counting, they may be right.
What else is going on in App Land? Read on to find out!
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If you own an iPhone and haven’t browsed the App Store, you don’t know what you’re missing! Then again, if you are reading this 2nd App Avalanche, you can get a taste of what’s waiting for you in the App Store and maybe, just maybe, you’ll not waste another second and start downloading some great apps for your iPhone!
With your iPhone in hand, let’s get buried in some apps right now with App Avalanche 2! Read the rest of this entry »
