Apple has made less than $45m in revenue from the app store
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Apple has made less than $45m in revenue from the app store
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Re: Apple has made less than $45m in revenue from the app store
#2How many iPhone and iPod Touch sales have they made based on the availability of third party apps? The ecosystem is heavily pushed to consumers.
Re: Apple has made less than $45m in revenue from the app store
#3I don't think that Apple really needs the App Store to be a money maker. In fact, if it breaks even, it would be a win since the applications themselves are adding value to the iPhone and iPod touch in the same way that third party applications for Microsoft's operating systems have created so much value for Microsoft.
The apps are quickly establishing the iPhone/iPod touch as _the_ platform in handheld computing making it very difficult for third parties to compete against Apple. With the Palm Pre coming out soon, a lot of people are going to be looking at it like people looked at Macs a few years back - sure, I could get a Pre and you can even argue that it's a better device, but everything runs on an iPhone and I have no idea whether people will port things to the Pre.
Apples knows - or at least should know - that the App Store is what will give them the Microsoft advantage in the mobile space. As everything is iPhone/iPod touch compatible, sales will keep going up which will drive even more app creation which will drive even more sales. What a wonderful cycle, unless you are on the outside trying to compete.
Re: Apple has made less than $45m in revenue from the app store
#4How many iPhone and iPod Touch sales have they made based on the availability of third party apps? The ecosystem is heavily pushed to consumers.
I came to drop the same comment, but the last part of the article points that out
Much like iTunes, Apple is using the App Store to drive demand for their hardware.
Re: Apple has made less than $45m in revenue from the app store
#5How could that sort of miniscule revenue finance some servers, bandwidth, and a payment system? You'd almost think Apple were trying to make more money from selling the phones and contracts :)
Re: Apple has made less than $45m in revenue from the app store
#6How many iPhone and iPod Touch sales have they made based on the availability of third party apps? The ecosystem is heavily pushed to consumers.
Agreed, if third-party apps did not exist for the iPhone, I would not have bought one.
Re: Apple has made less than $45m in revenue from the app store
#7I don't think that Apple really needs the App Store to be a money maker. In fact, if it breaks even, it would be a win since the applications themselves are adding value to the iPhone and iPod touch in the same way that third party applications for Microsoft's operating systems have created so much value for Microsoft. The apps are quickly establishing the iPhone/iPod touch as _ the _ platform in handheld computing m…
So how did Apple compete against Microsoft in the desktop computing space? They built an ecosystem of their own. To make sure people would come there, they saw what sucked about Microsoft, and made sure that those very weaknesses were their own strengths.
There are plenty of things that suck about the iPhone. If Palm has the insight to spot those and capitalize on them, then they'll win a place in the smartphone businesss.
Re: Apple has made less than $45m in revenue from the app store
#8The $45m headline number is a drop in the bucket compared to what Apple makes from selling iPhone and iPod Touch hardware. The crucial point this story misses is that Apple has generated a marketplace worth $50m-$112m in revenue for makers of iPhone apps, with an App Store that launched less than a year ago. This is huge.
Compare that to the $100m "iPhone Fund" that Kleiner Perkins announced in March 2008 (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/06/kleiner-perkins-anounce...). This seemed like a lot at the time, eclipsing the $10m "fbFund" for Facebook Apps from Accel, which itself seemed big at the time (http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/09/17/facebook-launches-fbfun...).
While $100m and $50-112m seem like comparable numbers, the difference between investment and revenues is huge. Think about it, would you rather have $100m in VC money or $100m in revenues (per year!) from customers?
The biggest benefit to Apple is not the revenues they get from Apps. The biggest benefit is from the thriving community of iPhone app makers who are probably willing to spend on the order of $50-$112m of effort (per year!) improving Apple's platform. A platform worth $2+ billion/yr for Apple.
Re: Apple has made less than $45m in revenue from the app store
#9How many iPhone and iPod Touch sales have they made based on the availability of third party apps? The ecosystem is heavily pushed to consumers.
iPod Touch sales growth more than doubled year-over-year last quarter, and Apple has sold 37 million units of the iPhone and iPod Touch
Re: Apple has made less than $45m in revenue from the app store
#10How many iPhone and iPod Touch sales have they made based on the availability of third party apps? The ecosystem is heavily pushed to consumers.
I came to drop the same comment, but the last part of the article points that out Much like iTunes, Apple is using the App Store to drive demand for their hardware.
This is a really good example of mutual benefit marketing. The 45m is nothing to sneeze at, but it's gross, so their actual take may be minimal, but it's a fantastic service to their customers and drives hardware sales for them.
I honestly think it's the only future of marketing as the mindshare we're all vying for becomes more and more saturated/savvy. I've written about this a few times at my agency's blog (http://voltagecreative.com/blog/?s=mutual+benefit) and I'll probably do a write up on this.