RSSApple claims $30 million in iPhone software sales
By Ed Oswald | Published August 11, 2008, 12:28 PM
CEO Steve Jobs said that nearly 60 million applications have been downloaded, generating about $1 million in sales per day for the company.
Obviously with an average selling price of 50 cents -- and the minimum charge for an application being 99 cents -- a large portion of iPhone applications downloaded through the Apps Store have been free. Even so, the number is quite impressive.
Sales of third-party applications could reach $360 million in the first year alone, Jobs told The Wall Street Journal. With the 30 percent cut that Apple takes, that would mean $108 million in revenues. He also sounded quite confident that sales would accelerate.
"Who knows, maybe it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time," he mused, saying he had not seen anything like this in his career.
Much of the revenues -- $9 million -- went to the top ten developers. Sega led the pack with its Super Monkey Ball game, generating $3 million in revenues for the company across three million downloads.
Another popular title was the free drug-reference app Epocrates, which was downloaded by 125,000 people, one fifth of them doctors. The company, which shares the app's name, said it was its most successful launch of any mobile device to which it has ported a game.
Jobs also gave the first official word that iPhone 3G does indeed include code within its firmware that would allow the company to "blacklist" applications. He however argued that it was necessary to protect its customers.
He seemed to suggest that it would only be used if an application is found to be malicious after the company had approved it. In the interview, he called it "irresponsible" not to have some kind of protection at all. However, he did not specifically identify the "kill switch," as it has been dubbed, as the specific feature discovered by researcher Jonathan Zdziarski last Thursday, which some have doubted could actually serve that function.
The phone is a heap. Battery is dead in no time & you will have to pay the adults (Apple) to change it when it dies. The apple cheerleaders are a joke - they would by tu*d if it had the logo!
Score: 0
Not sure I need 'invoices' e-mailed to me for the free apps I 'purchase', but still fairly impressed with the store. Works well, and most of the apps are quite useful. Not sure we need light sabers though. :P
Score: 0
Love the iPhone - hate the "supervision"
-----------------
iPhone 3G does indeed include code within its firmware that would allow the company to "blacklist" applications.
Score: 0
... and i claim that my car can talk
Score: 0
How much of that came from the 'I Am Rich' app? lol
Score: 0
Apparently they only sold 8 of those... so 0.027%?
Score: 0
That was a rhetorical question for a laugh. You are so anal mate.
Score: 0
Someone had to come in a shake up the mobile phone market. I guess it's better MS didn't get thier hands on this.
Apple and all of thier products still suck in my opinion and the fanboys are the worst I've ever seen. Worse than our boy DaveBG and Blu-Ray.
Too bad there are so many people with nothing more important in thier lives than to cheerlead Apple and defend all of thier crooked decisions.
Score: 0
*facepalm*
Score: 0
I still thing apple should get 0% of the profit from the programs.
Score: 0
As soon as you start hosting everything on your own machines and take care of maintenance, vendor service, customer service, etc., I'm sure they'll agree.
Score: 0
Agreed!!!
Score: 0
exactly. You want services that cost thousands per day to be free to you?
Rub that lamp a little harder buddy...
Score: 0
If there's one word I hate in the world, it's buddy. Other than that what you said would've been funny otherwise.
Score: 0
As soon as Apple pays developers for publishing their applications and making their iPhone market grow larger because of them it would be fine as well.
Score: 0