iPhone app sales kicking app on Android Market, says study

Despite the growth of Google’s Android Market, Apple’s App Store is still the top dog among mobile app stores.

Looking at different app stores this past year, research firm Distimo found that sales of iPhone apps alone in Apple’s iPhone App Store generated four times the revenue seen by Android Market. Sales of iPad apps in the App Store chalked up the second highest revenue total.

The standings were compiled by looking at the total revenue created by the 200 highest grossing apps across each store. For the purposes of its report, Distimo separated Apple’s store into two distinct entities - one for iPhone apps and one for iPad apps.

One country Apple can thank for its app store sales is China, where downloads jumped dramatically in 2011. Comparing China with the U.S., Chinese iPhone users accounted for 30 percent of the total downloads between the two countries, while Chinese iPad owners generated 44 percent of the downloads among the two nations. …

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This post is intended for young, competent programmers who are looking to start making their livings as independent, contract programmers - probably high schoolers, college students or recent college graduates. I won’t be discussing specific figures, but rather a strategy for coming up with a fair price point.

Getting paid, getting paid

When I was about to begin my first paid programming gig, I was a college senior and I didn’t have a clue about how much I should be charging. I knew I was pretty good at what I did - I had a few successes on the App Store and a portfolio of open source projects I was proud of. Even so, I’d never worked as part of a development team before, and had never worked for a top tier client on a high-pressure project. So, I asked around to my older friends who knew a bit more about the business.

….

A few months ago I tweeted this: “If I were a publisher I would either: a) pull my app from the App Store or b) invest all available cash in Apple stock.” The latter piece of advice was probably pretty solid, if not very practical — Apple’s stock has been performing like no other in recent history.

But my former piece of advice for publishers – to pull their apps from the App Store – doesn’t seem to have resonated much, as many publishers keep pushing out their respective iPhone and iPad apps. That said, I’m betting this trend is a short-term fad that will eventually reverse, and here’s why:

Can we get a count of the number of fart apps submitted to the App Store? And the number accepted?

… like counting pennies in a jar.

This is such a moving target, or more like a revolving door given that apps are also pulled from the store. In any case, Apple is so far ahead of the pack that their numbers never mattered much.

Sometimes I just go into the app store and choose what I think is the best and worst icon, judging purely on gut reaction artistic merit. Then I deconstruct the image to figure out what makes some images irresistible and others completely forgettable.