Free iPhone programming Video Tutorial from Stanford University
iPhone apps will make money if you have great ideas. If you want to learn how to write, but tired of reading books, try to download the video from Stanford University. The first lecture is already available in iTunes U or free. It’s shot 2 days ago so the content is fresh. You will be able to download both the video and PDF lecture notes for free. Unfortunately it won’t talk about iPhone OS 3.0 because of NDA. Click here to start your lesson. Choose iPhone Application Programming after iTunes is launched
Imagine you making $40,000 in 2 days its possible iFart developer did it.
iFart, therefore I am (the #1 iPhone app). Or something like that. iFart is fast becoming one of the most popular iPhone/iPod Touch applications out there. The developer of iFart, Joel Comm, has been pretty forthcoming with sales figures, and on his blog he noted that over Christmas Eve and Christmas day, more than 58,000 people purchased a copy of iFart, netting him over $40,000 dollars in just two days.
iFart, as the name suggests, is a $.99 novelty iPhone app that plays a wide variety of fart sounds. It was initially released on December 12th, and has since skyrocketed up the app store charts, and is now the #1 paid program in the app store. In the two weeks following its release, it’s been downloaded 113,865 times, netting the creators $78,908 in the process. 78 grand is higher than the average income per capita for every country in the world – and this guy surpassed that in two weeks. Incredible.
iFart, though, isn’t the only app that’s making noise (sorry) in the app store this holiday season. MacRumors is reporting that a number of other developers have also seen sales of their apps triple and even quadruple over the past few days. The sudden surge in app downloads can most certainly be attributed to the large number of iPhone and iPod Touch’s that were sold during the holiday season, and also to people cashing in their iTunes Store gift cards to load up on apps.
Interestingly, iBeer is currently the #3 paid app in iTunes. I wonder if there’s a correlation.
Below is some of the blog lines from the iFart developer Joel Comm. Its really inspiring as he gives out numbers on how much he is earning from these iPhone apps.
After hitting 13274 units on 12/22, a number of stories broke out sharing that our iFart app had net us approximately $10K for that single day.
Do a Google news search and you’ll see that we have been mentioned all over the place.
The story has gone international with coverage in Argentina, Canada, The U.K., Italy, Spain, Korea, Russia, Denmark, Germany, India, Israel and more.
The iFart Mobile video we posted on YouTube has been viewed 45,000 times as of this writing.
Even more interesting is a video review posted by a third party that has been viewed 48,000 times!
Twitter is alive with mentions of the application.
Anyway, back to the stats.
Here are the numbers I’ve revealed previously…
12/12 – 75 units – #70 entertainment
12/13 – 296 units – #16 entertainment
12/14 – 841 units – #76 overall, #8 entertainment
12/15 – 1510 units – #39 overall, #5 entertainment
12/16 – 1797 units – #22 overall, #3 entertainment
12/17 – 2836 units – #15 overall, #3 entertainment
12/18 – 3086 units – #10 overall, #3 entertainment
12/19 – 3117 units – #9 overall, #2 entertainment
12/20 – 5497 units, – #4 overall, #2 entertainment
12/21 – 9760 units – #2 overall, #1 entertainment
12/22 – 13274 units – #1 overall
12/23 was similar to the previous day. We sold 13,349 units.
I was pleased. I’ll take that on any day.
But I had a hunch that Christmas Eve and Christmas Day would be higher. How much higher was anyone’s guess.
All I knew was that a lot of people would be getting iPhones and iPod Touch MP3 players on Christmas Day.
Christmas came a day early for us. On 12/24, my jaw hit the floor when I checked my stats.
We sold 19520 units, providing $13364 in net income after Apple takes their cut.
I now knew that Christmas Day would be bigger than I would have imagined.
I made sure I was sitting down before I checked my day-after-Christmas stats.
It was a good thing.
On Christmas Day, 38,927 people purchased iFart Mobile.
Thirty-eight thousand nine-hundred and twenty seven.
Wow.
Thats $27,249 net.
Again I say, wow.
So I want to say “thank you” to everyone who has purchased iFart, to everyone who has written about us, to those who have reviewed the application and to Apple for making our app available to the general public.
With Wal-mart entering into the iPhone marketplace on 12/28, the app store will have more customers than ever before. This is getting interesting.
Well, we’ve done it.
A combination of marketing, timing, quality and providence has landed our application as the #1 best-selling app in the iTunes app store.
I appreciate the coverage we’ve received through media outlets and blogs.
Now that we’ve hit #1, I am going to post one more set of stats to add to those previously posted here.
Here is updated data from the time the app went live on December 12th, 2008.
The format is date, daily units sold, overall ranking (starting 12/14) and entertainment category ranking.
12/12 – 75 units – #70 entertainment
12/13 – 296 units – #16 entertainment
12/14 – 841 units – #76 overall, #8 entertainment
12/15 – 1510 units – #39 overall, #5 entertainment
12/16 – 1797 units – #22 overall, #3 entertainment
12/17 – 2836 units – #15 overall, #3 entertainment
12/18 – 3086 units – #10 overall, #3 entertainment
12/19 – 3117 units – #9 overall, #2 entertainment
12/20 – 5497 units, – #4 overall, #2 entertainment
12/21 – 9760 units – #2 overall, #1 entertainment
12/22 – 13274 units – #1 overall
You can see that there was a massive leap in total units sold from #4 to #2 and from #2 to #1. I was actually pretty stunned on both 12/21 and 12/22. I wonder what the days ahead will bring.
So there you have it.
I am now going into “silent mode” as to our data as I feel I have provided what developers would want to know.
I and my team are working on several other apps, so watch for new stuff coming soon.
Which apps are popular in Apple iPhone or iTouch store so you get an idea what people are buying more
Apple has worked hard to position the iPod Touch as a portable gaming platform, and according to a recent study by ComScore, they have succeeded in doing exactly that.
The comprehensive study, released yesterday, shows that both the Touch and the iPhone, according to apps installed, have a user base that has bought into the mobile gaming platform concept. Based on the number of apps actually installed on iPhone and Touch units:
12 of the top 25 apps are games.
3 of the top five apps are games.
The top app is a game.
That most-installed application is Tapulous’ Tap Tap Revenge, a “Dance Dance Revolution” rhythm game. The other two games in the top five were Touch Hockey: FS5, and Pac-Man, according to a PC Magazine story. Given that the primary uses for the iPhone and the iPod Touch are as a cell phone and an MP3 player, respectively, the dominance of games as installed apps is more than a little surprising. Apple thought that the gaming idea would sell, and they were obviously right.
Brian Jurutka, vice president of ComScore, had this to say: “It’s impressive that a game like Tapulous’s Tap Tap Revenge can attract a higher penetration among Apple app users than apps for larger and more established brands. Tap Tap’s success demonstrates that there is ample opportunity in the app space for any publisher to obtain significant distribution with a product that engages users. Since the number of app users is growing nearly 10 percent each month, that opportunity will only continue to grow for both existing and emerging app developers.”
The pack-leading Tap Tap Revenge was the most downloaded application, at almost a third, or 32 percent, of all users. Backgrounds, a program which allows a user to change the background image of the screen, was the second most downloaded application. Touch Hockey, Facebook, and Pac-Man rounded out the top five.
Apple has shown that it can capture the gaming market on its mobile platforms. It remains to be seen if they can be as successful in capturing the business app marketplace. With new iPhone models due out in June, along with a vastly enhanced operating system, it is likely that both platforms will continue to have success in gaming, and will make make up ground on the business side by taking advantage of hooks in the new operating system.
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Mobile Orchard’s Dan Grigsby recently found an interesting way to analyze the data given out by the iPhone App Store – particularly in the areas of popularity and price. With this information, we’re going to derive a few conclusions about the economy behind iPhone applications as well as come up with some speculations..
This is the first in a series of posts to analyze the data from late November 2008 and answer the following questions:
- Which type of company is making the most money from iPhone apps? (this post!)
- Given the rush to the bottom in terms of sacrificing pricing for popularity, are cheaper apps significantly more popular?
- What are the different price vs popularity profiles for various application categories?
- Which apps are making the most money overall?
- Is it better to sell more copies of an application cheaply or fewer at a higher rate?
- When comparing price and popularity, which apps are outliers and why?
Who’s Making The Most Money In The Games Category?
As a taster, let’s focus on a single category – the Games category. It’s the most popular category on the store and the most money is at play there. Here’s a graph based on our data:
Each point represents an application. The x (bottom) axis represents price rounded to the nearest dollar. Free applications have been removed as due to their number they do not help with the correlation and increase the data density too much. The y (left) axis represents popularity. Popularity is typically between 0 and 1, but with free applications removed, the highest ranking game (iHunt – in this case) gets just 0.177.
Price * Popularity = Earning Potential
Despite iHunt being the most popular non-free application in the category, however, it ranks just tenth if you multiply the popularity by the price. By such a metric, the top performers in the category are:
| Rank | Title | Price | Popularity | Price * Popularity |
| 1 | Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D | $5.99 | 0.115 | 0.689 |
| 2 | Super Monkey Ball | $9.99 | 0.051 | 0.509 |
| 3 | Texas Hold’Em | $4.99 | 0.079 | 0.349 |
| 4 | Fieldrunners | $4.99 | 0.071 | 0.354 |
| 5 | Bejeweled 2 | $2.99 | 0.116 | 0.347 |
| 6 | Asphalt 4: Elite Racing | $7.99 | 0.041 | 0.328 |
| 7 | Spore Origins | $7.99 | 0.029 | 0.232 |
| 8 | TETRIS | $7.99 | 0.027 | 0.216 |
| 9 | Strategic Assault | $1.99 | 0.095 | 0.189 |
| 10 | iHunt | $0.99 | 0.177 | 0.175 |
What’s noteworthy from the data above is that the top games in terms of revenue (projected by multiplying popularity by price) are not the most popular games overall and nearly all of the top ten are by established players in the games market – Vivendi, SEGA, Apple, PopCap, Gameloft, Xen Games and Electronic Arts. Only Fieldrunners and iHunt are by independent developers (Subatomic Studios and John Moffett respectively).
So established players make the most money. Hardly a shock, but when there are over 2,000 games in the category, it’s amazing to see it hold true so consistently. It helps prove, however, that established brand values are important when it comes to making money, not a low price. Crash Bandicoot, Super Monkey Ball, Bejeweled, Spore, and Tetris are all well known and comfortably established outside of the iPhone world. Competing with these powerful brands requires something extremely compelling, such as Fieldrunners, which has been very successful primarily due to word of mouth (and that it’s a Tower Defense
game, which have long been popular online in Flash form).
Money can be made on iPhone App Ads also another avenue to earn more on iPhone
Many of the get-rich-quick iPhone stories we’ve seen involve small development efforts — one or two people — selling enough apps for $1 each that they can quit their day jobs and work on iPhone stuff all the time. But some companies are also making a nice amount of revenue from in-app ads, according to one iPhone ad firm.
In a report (embedded below), AdWhirl says that top apps can make $400 to $5,000 per day on ads, averaging an effective CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) near $2. (That sounds terrible compared to a good Web site, but it’s better than Facebook or MySpace apps.)
The problem: These are some of the top, most-popular apps we’re talking about. The vast majority of apps are not anywhere near the top 100, and will have the same problem making money from ads as they do charging for their apps. “Crack the top 100… and developers can earn more than $400 a day,” AdWhirl boasts. But if most apps are making far less than $400 a day (~$150,000 a year), that’s not going to be enough to sustain a real business.
As of May 3, 2009, AdWhirlis serving 250 million monthly ad impressions with over 10% of the top 50 apps in the Apple App Store on our platform. We have also obtained data prior to our launch from various developers.
-Break top 100 as an iPhonefree apps developer, make $400 to $5000 dollars a dayon ads
-CTR and eCPMsaverage 2.6% and $1.90, respectively, ~8x morethan social media ads on Facebookor Myspace
-Fill rates average about 60%across ad networks (developers locked in to only one ad network lose 40% of revenue); ad aggregators still serve a needed purpose
IPHONE APP DEVELOPERS MAKE MONEY
-Create an engagingfree app and earn several thousand a day
-5800+ Drink and Cocktail Recipes generated over $1500 / day
-iFartAlert! generated over $2000 / day
-Sound Grenade generatedover $3000 / day
-[Wishes to remain anonymous] generated over $5000 / day
Crack the top 100 in the Apple App Store and developers can earn more than $400 a day
-Fuzz Friend generates over $400 / day
-iSayFree (Simon Says) generates over $400 / day
Revenue peak and dropoffhappens within 2 months
-Afterwards, revenue streams actually remain consistent
-Plotting a set of index apps (time shifted to adjust for when they launched) yields a similar chart
HIGH PERFORMANCE CTRS AND ECPMS
eCPMsrange from $.50 to $4.00
-High engagement apps average $1.90 eCPMwith 2.6% CTR
-In comparison, social media ads on Facebookand MySpace are generally lower (we estimate about 8x lower, many developers point to < $.10 eCPMsaccording to Inside Facebook)
High Engagement Apps
-eCPMsrange from $1.00 to $4.00
-Refreshing ads every 1 minute is common practice; we’ve found that increasing the frequency to 30 seconds does not significantly affect eCPMs
Low Engagement Apps
-eCPMsrange from $.50 to $1.00
-Maximize revenue by pumping ad requests through to users
-Ads can refresh as often as once every 30 seconds –any more frequently and CTRs (and subsequently eCPMs) suffer
SUBPAR FILL RATES MEAN LOST REVENUE
Fill Rates arethe percentage of ads served to users compared to the number of ads requested
Low Fill Rates > Lost Impressions > Lost Revenue
Fill Rates average 60% across ad networks in the US.Recently, AdMobhas released App Exchange to remedy this issue
-This is a great solution for developers who want to focus on distribution of their new apps
-Developers who want to focus on monetization
AdWhirlis a free client/server ad platform that the developer installs in the app and then fully controls from a web interface. Key features
-Developer can freely switch among ad networks
-“Rollover” feature guarantees 100% fill rates
-Auto-optimization feature maximizes revenue from ads
-Custom ad builder can cross-promote paid/liteapp combos
Great news $20 per app/game paid by 1000 interested customers do the math
The App Store has been an absolute revelation. With over 500 million downloads already, Apple itself is making money, and so are the thousands of developers, both amateur and professional. Meanwhile, the iPhone has started to compete with more established games consoles such as the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. So who can blame Apple for wanting to put these two phenomenons together.
There are thousands of developers selling their wares on the iPhone App Store at the moment, and that has lead to some magnificent success stories such as that of Ethan Nicholas, the developer of the bestselling iShoot. Games are a big part of the App Store, but with so many, some are getting lost in the crowd.
While the Top Apps charts are a good way of sorting the apps and signposting people towards where they should be headed, they do tend to be dominated by lower-priced apps – a result of market forces and the recession clearly at work.
This means the higher-priced apps, such as games developed by big companies, are at risk of getting ignored. If Apple truly wants the iPhone to start competing as a legitimate handheld games device in its own right, this is clearly a problem, and one that companies such as EA would want solving before it truly embraces the format.
Pocket Gamer is reporting how Apple could now be planning an easy solution to the problem – a premium games section on the App Store. This area would be restricted to large publishers and the games would have a fixed price point around the $20 mark. Apple could announce details of the move at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.
Games are already a large part of the App Store, with over 1,500 titles available, or 25 percent of the total number. But the big name publishers would have to be accommodated in order for the iPhone to fly as a games machine in its own right. This seems like a sensible solution. The only question left would be whether that $20 price point would be too high for most?
–
When one considers the Apple App Store, there are a lot of amazing numbers to think about. Two of them are that there are over 6,000 games available out of more than 27,000 apps.
Even given how popular the iPhone and iPod Touch platforms have become, 27,131 apps is a lot of apps. And it probably says something about the platforms themselves that so many of them are games and that there is such an amazing variety of apps that are not. The popularity of these platforms cut across so many age groups and types of users that this is probably the only way it could have turned out. Together, the iPhone and the touch represent the Renaissance Man of the mobile marketplace.
Taken all together, 27,131 applications are available at the App store. Content requiring payment totals 20,972 (77.3 percent) while free content comes to 6,159 apps (22.7 percent), according to a GamaSutra article. Other significant categories in the App store include books with 2,450 representatives, platform utilities with 2,319 applications, and education with 1,886 entries. Again, these apps are nothing if not spread across a wide range.
The iPhone / iPod Touch format has attracted a great deal of interest from companies which produce traditional video games since the App Store opened in July of 2008. As one example, mobile developer Gameloft recently admitted the the Apple App Store was indeed its largest customer. For the record, 75.8 percent of the apps in the games category must be paid for, with only 24.2 percent being free.
It is difficult not to compare the applications at the App Store with those which will be available from the competition. The competitor about which the most is known, the RIM Blackberry App World, recently announced its business model. Given the tiered system they are using, and the barriers they have placed to free apps (mainly a $200 “submission fee”), they are likely to have a much different mix of software. That is probably in keeping with the button-down image of the Blackberry line.
Somehow, the image of the Renaissance Man is more appealing to a lot of people than the image of the Brooks Brothers suit, with vest. It may truly be that variety is the spice of life, and that all work and no play makes anyone a dull person. It may be that some of the popularity if the iPhone and Touch is due to this variety. Why spend all your time on email when you could be using some of it to play a game, read a book, or find the closest sushi restaurant?
Good news you can make more money if you are creating iPhone apps
iPhone Apps are becoming expensive.
Developers and consumers alike are still figuring out the iPhone App Store. The applications being made available are slowly improving in quality, and buyers are qualifying their purchases more, not just buying the latest app to find its way on to the marketplace. And pricing is also changing, with a lot of newly-released apps increasing in price.
The iPhone App Store has a mixture of free and commercial software available on it. Whether it’s to be given away at no charge, or how it’s priced, is entirely up to the developer behind the product. And this has lead to a diverse range of prices. But there are trends to be seen.
VentureBeat recently published an article talking about how many new apps seem to be heading for the $9.99 range, a massive increase from the current average. Is this change a result of the developers wanting to make a fast buck, or is it more a sign of a maturing marketplace where software is priced at the correct level to sell in large quantities while still allowing for profit?
Most paid apps currently cost just 99-cents – cheap enough to prompt most people to part with their cash and take a gamble that they’re buying a dud. And the quality of the 99-cent app can vary wildly, with some offering a quick thrill while others are worth much more money than is being asked.
Developers are now realizing that while pricing apps at 99-cents means millions of sales, it also keeps the profit margins stupidly low. And some apps can cost a fortune to develop. This is especially true of the new wave of games, which aren’t simple affairs but are full games with well-known and well-respected names such as SimCity, Need For Speed, and Tetris.
The iPhone is gaining a lot of support as a games platform, with some judging it in the same light as the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. But while games on those handheld consoles can cost up to $50, iPhone apps very rarely venture above $10, which makes them incredible value for money.
There does seem to be evidence of a trend towards a higher price point on the way for iPhone apps, with $9.99 looking to be the new sweet spot that rides the line between popularity and profitability. But when the developers are starting to spend serious amounts of money bringing these apps to market, it’s probably more than justified.
Tips to make more money from iPhone apps: How to sell your apps
There are now over 15,000 iPhone apps available from the App Store. Some are good, some are bad, some are fun, and some are serious. Between them all, they’ve been downloaded over 500 million times, but the individual sales tallies for each app vary wildly. Some are hugely popular, making their developers small fortunes. iShoot is the latest success story.
The iPhone App Store has enabled everyone to become a software developer, at least if they have the tech skills and creative talent to begin with. But how do you make your app stand out from the increasingly large crowd? That takes a combination of marketing genius and luck.
It seems that Ethan Nicholas, the developer of iShoot has exhibited more luck than anything in getting his original app to number one of the Top Paid Apps chart. IShoot has been there for around a week now but the app didn’t have quite such an auspicious start.
IShoot is a combat game where you take on the role of a tank commander charged with shooting other tanks into oblivion. Nicholas originally put the game on the App Store in October, 2008 priced at $2.99. A fair price for a fair game. But after just a few downloads the app disappeared into virtual obscurity like so many others before it.
Things changed over Christmas, however, as according to iPhone Saviour, Nicholas took the opportunity of some time off from regular work to throw up iShoot Lite, a free trial version of the game. On January 11, 2008, eight days after going live, iShoot Lite rose to number one of the Top Free Apps chart. And the original iShoot consequently rocketed to the top spot of the Paid Apps.
IShoot was downloaded over 16,000 times in just one day, earning Nicholas $33,000 or so in the space of 24 hours. That’s after Apple had taken their 30 percent. To stay at the top, it’s estimated iShoot is shifting 10,000 downloads a day, meaning Nicholas has likely earned more money in the last week than I will in five years.
Nicholas is now quitting his job at Sun Microsystems to develop apps full-time. Up to now, it’s just been a hobby, and iShoot was developed on an old Macbook by a man with no experience with Objective-C programming. Which just shows how the App Store can turn anyone into a software developer, and make them a lot of money into the bargain.
Will there now be a trend for giving away free trial versions of apps in order to push the paid version?
How to create your own simple iPhone App or iPhone application
Another not so old wizkid shows how to develop your own Apple iPhone application
Video Tutorial showing how to create a simple Web app for your iPhone in less than 15 minutes
How to Make Money from Free iPhone Apps or Games
For years mobile advertising has been on the cusp of developing into a reliable marketing tool. Yet, nothing has materialized in a real, significant way. Rather than simply advertising on mobile applications, companies should pay developers to create simple, useful apps. Then put their logo on that application. iPint is one such example. I have a story for BusinessWeek today where I talk to the developers of iPint.
When flicking through the App Store I came upon the application iBeer. This rather popular application allows you to pretend you’ve got a beer in your phone. It costs $2.99. Three bucks for a novelty gag?On an intern’s salary, $3 for 30 seconds of entertainment makes no sense.
Luckily, Carling beer offers a free application that does the exact same thing and more. Their app, iPint, lets you guide a beer down a bar in to waiting hands. Using the accelerometer you steer the beer through an obstacle course that includes other beers, candles and potato chips. To slow down the beer there are Carling coasters on the bar. Once you get it into the hand, your prize is a watching the phone virtually fill with beer, which you can pretend to drink down, just like iBeer.
I want more applications like this.
For instance, I was looking for a decent spider solitaire game. The cheapest I could find was $3.99. The rest were $9.99. On principle alone, I’m not going to pay $10 for solitaire, a game I’ve grown accustomed to getting for free with my PC. Why wouldn’t a company like Burger King pay a small amount of money to a developer to make a solitaire application? They could put their logo in the background or on the top of the cards. And every time I sit on a bus or train playing my solitaire I start thinking about Burger King.
Some companies are working on developing free branded applications. Illusion Labs, the company behind iPint is developing two more games, and VML, a marketing company is developing four new applications on behalf of clients. While companies waited for the market to establish itself, they may have missed a chance.
When Smallware introduced a free solitaire application, it shot to the top of the downloaded list. Imagine if some corporation had been ahead of Smallware with a branded app? Not only would they get all the iPhone and iPod Touch users looking at their app, they’d get dolts like me writing about them.
It’s still early times for the App Store, but creating free simple apps directly sponsored by a single company seems to be a no-brainer.—
Can developing free software for mobile phones be a business? It can if you’re Illusion Labs, a fledgling company in the Swedish port city of Malmö.
Illusion Labs was started a year ago by Carl Loodberg and Andreas Alptun, who had worked together at another Swedish company called TAT, designing software for companies including Samsung and Nvidia (NVDA). They set up their own company so they could concentrate on developing applications specifically for Apple’s iPhone. “When the iPhone came out, we were excited about the big screen, the graphics chip, and the good components,” says Loodberg. “We thought it was an opportunity too big to pass up.”
It looks like they were right. The first game they developed has become one of the most popular pieces of software for the iPhone. The game is called Labyrinth, a digital update to the old wooden box on which you maneuver a small silver ball through a maze while avoiding cut-out holes the ball could plunge into. The game, which is available for free from Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes, is being downloaded 80,000 times a day, according to Loodberg, and is getting rave reviews from users.
“Controls extremely precise,” wrote one person on iTunes. “Smooth, very fluid, and is realistic,” wrote another. While the game is free, its success could mean rich rewards for Illusion Labs. The company is selling a souped-up version of the game, which is also quite popular, for $6.99 on iTunes. More promising, advertising agencies have contacted the company to develop variations on the game with the logos of advertisers embedded in them.
MARKETING AND MOBILE PHONES
Already, Illusion Labs has designed a game called iPint for Carling beer, with the London-based ad agency Beattie McGuiness Bungay (BMB). In iPint, an iPhone user tilts her phone to guide a beer down a bar through a variety of obstacles and into a waiting hand. Once the beer arrives at its destination, the screen changes into a pint glass with Carling’s logo on it. It then fills up with a virtual beer, which disappears when the phone is tilted to simulate drinking from a glass. Loodberg
and Alptun won’t comment specifically on how much they were paid for the work. This is a new era for marketing and mobile phones. In the past, phonemakers including Nokia (NOK) and Motorola (MOT) and wireless operators such as AT&T (T) and Verizon Wireless (VZ/VOD) kept tight control over what people could do with their mobile phones. That’s changing now, as wireless players let customers install new applications on their phones and go where they want on the mobile Web. Apple, whose phones are sold exclusively through AT&T in the U.S., has been at the leading edge of the trend. When Apple announced its iPhone 3G last month, it also unveiled the iTunes App Store, which lets any independent software developer market its products to the phone’s users. Already, there are more than 1,000 applications being offered by developers, from Illusion Labs to Major League Baseball to eBay (EBAY). Other wireless carriers are following the approach of Apple and AT&T. Verizon Wireless has said it will open its network to outsiders. In the future, there will be more opportunities for developers who want to work with a wide range of phones, from Apple’s devices to Research In Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry to the mobile phones of HTC.
RIFFING ON THE ACCELEROMETER
Loodberg, 28, and Alptun, 30, started working on Labyrinth even before they found out they would be able to market it through iTunes. They first developed the program last year for iPhones that were “unlocked,” or hacked so that they could be used on unauthorized wireless networks.
One reason they decided to work on Labyrinth was because the iPhone has an unusual technology called an accelerometer, a motion sensor that tracks when the device is tilted one way or the other. The technology is what allows you to hold the phone screen up, drop one side slightly, and send a digital ball rolling to the lower end of the phone. “I showed it to my 92-year-old grandmother, who never used a mobile phone or the Internet, and she immediately understood the game,” says Loodberg. The bootleg version of the game proved popular in certain circles. But it couldn’t be loaded onto an iPhone last year without violating the company’s terms of service. Indeed, BMB contacted Illusion Labs in November 2007 about designing a game for a marketing campaign. But the client opted to hold off until there was a sanctioned way to market applications to iPhone
users. Widespread popularity came only after Apple set up the iTunes Store so applications like Labyrinth could be installed with Apple’s blessing.
APP AS MARKETING TOOL
While this is one of the first iPhone applications used as a marketing tool, it is certainly not the last. “We have a lot of interest to do free, branded iPhone applications,” says Joe Grigsby of VML, an interactive marketing company that has worked with Burger King (BKC), Colgate (CL), and Intuit’s (INTU) TurboTax in the past. “Marketers were hesitant initially. They did not understand what applications would be popular or what the market would be,” says Grigsby. “[But now] there are a lot of opportunities. [Advertisers] and agencies see this as a chance to develop original branded content.” VML is now working on four different free, branded applications.As for Illusion’s partners, the two Swedes have turned a few heads, even beyond BMB. Loodberg says two companies have expressed interest in buying Illusion Labs, one ad agency and one game publisher. “They realize there is a great opportunity in branded applications. They’re not just boring banner ads,” he says. Still, Loodberg and Alptun aren’t ready to sell, at least not yet.
“We would like to stay independent,” says Loodberg. “We like to create things that we really like.”
How to make money from iPhone Apps
Lots of money earned through iPhone Apps.
Made money developing iPhone Apps
The Apple iTunes App Store has been a phenomenal success, with 100 million downloads taking place in just the first 60 days of operation. The iPhone and iPod Touch Software Development Kit has made it possible for anyone to become an application developer, and some of these independent developers are making an absolute fortune. So, how do they do it?
Last month saw Steve Jobs announce that the Apple App Store had reached the 100 million downloads milestone, a phenomenal number in such a short space of time. But, as well as making Apple even more revenue than it already does, this means those independent developers are also in the money, with some set to become millionaires.
Wired tells the story of Steve Demeter, developer of iPhone game Trism which sells for $5 a pop on the App Store. He spent about $5,000 developing the game, and now, just two months after the App Store went live, he has made $250,000 from it. That’s after he’s subtracted the development costs and paid Apple its (some would say) extortionate cut of 30%.
It’s projected that Demeter could make around $2 million from Trism by the middle of next year, which isn’t bad for a Bejeweled clone.
Demeter actually released Trism as a free application in the jailbreak community before the App Store enabled him to monetize the endeavour. Which is exactly what Tap Tap Revenge also did, allowing a loyal fan base to build slowly before the official release of the game on the App Store. This seems to be a good place to start, allowing people with hacked iPhones to act as beta testers for the final product.
Demeter also insists that the reasons Trism has been so successful where others have failed are: unique gameplay; high replay value; an online leaderboard to help build up a community.
The already mentioned Tap Tap Revenge is actually a free download, a fact which helped the music-rhythm game hit 1 million downloads in just two weeks. The profits for the makers are now only just being realised, with advertisements being placed in the game and a premium version being prepared for release.
To have a hit on the iPhone App Store involves a certain amount of luck, but increasing the likelihood of making big money means having a great product, and marketing it effectively. Whether that marketing involves nothing more than just word of mouth, or something more hands-on is just one of the choices any budding app developer will have to make.
The iPhone is a revolutionary handset. But it is also the key to a virtual gold mine — the iTunes App Store, where independent developers can become multimillionaires in just a year.
Since its launch in July, the App Store has grown to become an indie developer’s dream come true. Steve Demeter, developer of the vastly popular $5 iPhone game Trism, announced he made $250,000 in profit in just two months. His team? Himself, mainly, with a little bit of help from a friend and a contracted designer (whom he paid $500). If his profits continue at this rate, Demeter will earn nearly $2 million by July 2009.
“I
really didn’t think about the money,” Demeter said in a phone interview with Wired.com. “I got an e-mail from a lady who’s like, a 50-year-old woman who says, ‘I do not play games, but I love Trism.’ That’s what I did it for.”
What’s more, Demeter initially released Trism as a free native application in the Jailbreak community — meaning it was a game that users could play only if they hacked their iPhones. The prospects of making money were uncertain, but Demeter had a vision: He knew iPhone apps would get big once Apple released a software developer kit to allow third-party apps on the handset, and he wanted to get in on the platform early.
Though Demeter’s success was fortuitous, he said he expects other applications to see similar numbers. He said the factors that made Trism stand out were unique gameplay (Trism is essentially a version of Bejeweled using the iPhone’s accelerometer), high replay value and an online leaderboard that creates community. He said applications with great content will sell themselves, and that’s ultimately what other developers need to focus on, too.
In a sense, the App Store, despite its corporate ties, has created an open market where developers can strike it rich with minimal resources — even out of a garage — so long as they possess the talent and the time.
Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous, would agree. His company’s free application Tap Tap Revenge, a music-rhythm game that utilizes the iPhone’s touch screen and accelerometer, hit a milestone of 1,000,000 downloads just two weeks after its launch. As of this writing there are 1.75
million users who have downloaded Tap Tap Revenge, according to Decrem, and the company expects that number to grow to 2,000,000 by next week.
As for profits, Tapulous just recently began inserting advertisements in the game, and the company also has plans to release a premium version that will cost money.
Decrem was mum to disclose profit numbers, but Demeter estimates that any top iPhone app is making its company roughly $5,000 to $10,000 a day.
Decrem’s recipe for success with Tap Tap is similar to Trism’s: Paying attention to detail; keeping the app engaging and alive with various forms of gameplay; and relying on those two factors to spread popularity with an old-fashioned marketing method — word of mouth. Similar to Trism, Tap
Tap Revenge was also an app that initially emerged in the Jailbreak community, and it spawned a loyal following there before breaking out into the broader market with the launch of the App Store.
Decrem, whose initial team was only four people including himself, said he views the
App Store as an exciting new landscape, as opposed to today’s overcrowded world of dot-coms.
“I think it’s a very interesting space, and it’s very reminiscent of the early days of the web in terms of the amount of green fields and opportunity,” Decrem said in a phone interview. “You really don’t need a huge amount of capital. You need attention to detail and product, and that’s going to keep increasing.”
Not all App Store success stories started out with the iPhone in mind. Design by a Knife CEO Austin Sarner’s story is a bit different from Demeter’s and Decrem’s. Sarner built his reputation as a coder who had developed popular Mac applications in the past: App
Zapper and Disco. He didn’t even think about developing an iPhone app until much later in the game, he says.
Good thing he did: Sarner’s $3 application, Pennies, a budgeting tool, was the 12th most popular in the App Store at one point.
Sarner echoes the idea that great content — not marketing — is what drives App Store success.
“You can come up with a generic idea, but implement it properly and you really are going to stand out,” Sarner said in a phone interview.
“Basically everybody’s on the same level once they submit an iPhone app. Unlike traditional marketing, there’s no ad campaign: A user just sees what he sees in the iPhone store, and the applications kind of have to sell themselves to some extent.”
All three of these developers — big fish in a small pond, if you will — have plans for future iPhone applications as well.
“I
have a sense of a bigger picture,” Demeter said. “The community that has spread within Trism — the amount of people that use forum accounts and create a sense of community — I want to keep making great games, games people want to play.”
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