Interesting how iPhone apps seem to follow “90/10″ hit pattern typical to game industry: 10% of the apps make 90% of the revenues?
Here’s “million dollar apps” article:
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/10/million-dollar.html
And here’s a different experience (from Slashdot):
“It’s definitely not easy to even earn a little money on the App Store with just a good game, much less get rich. I am the developer of a game on the App Store and have not been paid a single cent from Apple yet. The game is highly polished and has great written reviews and even good reviews from professional sites. It’s only $0.99 to $1.99 (depending on sales). We’ve had a few hundred sales since the beginning of the year. Apple only pays if you break $250 for each region, not for all regions combined, so they keep what little we’ve earned indefinitely unless we make more sales. I’m not going to whore the product out by mentioning it here; I just want to get the message out that this is what’s up with the App Store to other potential developers. I logged over 500 hours developing that game and haven’t received anything for it. So not only is it entirely possible you won’t achieve success, but you might waste a lot of time and resources in the process. The process of getting any information from Apple was miserable, and they treat developers like shit. I used to have a lot of faith in Apple’s good will and have been a long-time Mac head, but after this experience, I’ll still buy Macs, but I will NEVER do any other kinds of business with them again.”
(http://apple.slashdot.org/story/09/10/14/2015232/Road-To-Riches-Doesnt-Run-Through-the-App-Store?from=rss)