Apple’s iCash: AppStore rakes in $30 million in one month

Posted on August 11, 2008 - 11:41 by Wolfgang Gruener

New York (NY) – The launch of the iPhone 3G may not have gone entirely to plan, but it appears that Apple’s AppStore sales are on track. $30 million last month, $360 million over the year and $1 billion annually in the future, CEO Jobs told the Wall Street Journal.

We are officially impressed.

The launch of the iPhone was about as screwed up as it could have been and Apple gets away without noteworthy short-term or long-term impact. Quite the contrary is the case. The company’s AppStore, which could more than replace the revenue Apple misses through a revenue sharing agreement with AT&T, is already generating cash on a large scale. As iPhone users are gobbling up software offered through the online store, Apple revealed that $30 million in revenue was recorded during the first month after launch. If our math is correct, then Apple will distribute $21 million to developers and keep $9 million in fees to itself. Not bad for the first month.

The current pace translates into $360 million over the first year, which, if we account for a slight growth rate, could easily expand to $500 million. Apple CEO Steve Jobs told the Wall Street Journal that the AppStore may “be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time."   

The apparently most successful paid application, Monkeyball, has sold more than 300,000 copies in 20 days at $10 each. For developer Sega, that means $2.1 million in sales.

As previously reported, individual people are also seeing substantial sales that are creating wealth among a new generation of software developers.

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