Techcrunch reality check of the iPhone App Store as a hype was very interesting for me for one very reason: I even did not know it existed. Actually, I might have heard about it, but never used it or met anybody using it (probably, same as the iTunes store, it´s only working in the US).
One of the quotes about the app developer work is specially interesting:
So here goes: The App Store probably will not make you rich.
To underscore the point, let’s go over some of the stats presented by Strom. His application Zen Jar ranks #34 on the Social Networking top apps list. And while most of us would probably assume it would take at least a hundred daily downloads to place there, the reality is quite surprising: Zen Jar reached the 34th position with only 30-35 downloads a day (or around $20 a day for a 99 cent app). Similarly, Sprint Board Pro, which ranked 95th in the Board Games section of the store with 6-8 daily downloads. Granted, these aren’t exactly the most popular categories, but If it takes fewer than 10 downloads a day to make the top 100 bestsellers of any category, that’s saying something.
This means products are being downloaded on a 30-35 download per day, an optimal case. However, I think this is quite a good number for a propietary one-platform device-based app. Would it be possible to overperform the App Store? For sure, but using an open-source environment like Sourceforge. I could not find the stats from Sourceforge but it is easy to imagine the huge difference. So, yet again, my main problem with Apple products is that they are great (the Audi of Computer Science) but too closed.
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