App Developer: Did You Make Profit on Your iPhone App?

Apple announced last week that more than 15 billion app’s have been downloaded from their App Store. Here are some other numbers revealed:

- More than 425,000 app’s of all kinds
- More than 100,000 app’s specifically for the iPad
- 20 categories of app’s
- App’s available in 90 countries
- More than 200 million iOS devices sold
- $2.5 billion dollars paid out to developers

And also consider about this:
Half of iPhone users buy at least an app a month

According to a study released Feb 25, 2010 by AdMob and reported by Crave, half of iPhone users buy at least an app a month. (Unfortunately I don’t have the latest figure yet.)

And here some interesting iPhone apps reality check:
According to Communities Dominate Brands:

– 85% of all downloadable apps are free

– The proportion of spending on apps is under 3% of the amount spent on the device

– The average app development cost is between $15,000 and $50,000 dollars

– For an investment of of $35,000 in an app that gets average downloads, it would take 10 years to recoup its development costs

What tells you about having your own iPhone app is:
The initial investment on creating an app is huge. Not everyone can afford it. Or if you are an app coder yourself, it is going to be a big challenge to design and come up with great app ideas. Or you really got some talent and created a great app, can you get it out of the void because there are over 500,000 apps. If not, you are going to loose all your investment in money and time. Because you are not going to get enough many downloads to cover the cost and make profit. That’s why app marketing really matters now.

Think about it, among 500,000 iPhone apps, you will want to become the top 1% which is to become top 5000. It is going to be tough. But if you do, you will make a fortune and share maybe 1% of 2.5 billion revenue!