How much does an iOS app developer earn?

According to the latest data published on the portal 148apps.biz On September 5, 2011, 471,319 apps are now available in the App Store. They are owned by 106,423 publishers/developers. Let’s try to calculate how much the average developer earns, considering that this summer the number of downloads of applications from the App Store for 3 years of its existence exceeded the mark of 15 billion?

The arithmetic would be very simple if it weren’t for a few factors. Firstly, 40% of the apps on the App Store are free, and it is quite difficult to find out how much revenue they bring to the developer. Secondly, Apple regularly announces what amounts have been paid to it to the publishers of iOS applications.

However, the same portal 148apps.biz cites the figure of $2.36 as the average price of an app on the App Store (to be honest, it’s not very clear how it adds up – perhaps only paid apps are taken into account when calculating?) So, if you multiply 15 billion downloads by $2.32, and then divide the resulting number by 3 (years) and by 106,423 (developers), it turns out that each of them should earn almost 109 thousand dollars a year!

But do not forget about the official data from Apple. In July 2011, they reported that they had paid more than $2.5 billion to developers. Accordingly, we divide this number by 3 (years) and by the number of developers (106,423) – we get an amount of slightly less than 8 thousand dollars. Noticeably different from the one that turned out earlier, isn’t it?

Of course, it is worth making a discount on the fact that there were fewer developers before, so dividing everything into three years “equally” is not entirely correct. But at the same time, think about the super-successful titles (let’s remember at least Angry Birds), which clearly “pulled” a rather large share of the amount announced.