iOS Top Leaders bring Developers $17 million a year

In July, Distimo published statistics of top iOS apps. Based on these figures, the authors of Gamesbrief calculated how much cash applications earn per year.

Recall that the main conclusions of Distimo were as follows:

• To get into the Top 50, the number of free downloads of the application should be 23 thousand, paid – 950, or it should bring $12 thousand daily.;
• The top 10 apps require 70,000 free downloads, 4,000 paid downloads, or $47,000 in daily revenue.

Let’s look at these numbers from the other side. Financial analysts sometimes consider the so-called “income projected based on current indicators.” To calculate it, the following scheme is used: if a company, for example, earns $ 1 million for the 1st quarter, then its annual income will be $ 4 million. That is, it is assumed that there are no opportunities for income growth, seasonal fluctuations and unpredictable recessions. 

The projected income has a very shaky analytical basis, but this indicator is used quite often. 

An even more unstable option is to take the daily income as the basis for calculating the annual one, because the difference between daily indicators is even more significant than between quarterly ones.

However, not everything is so sad. Firstly, the daily income that Distimo considers is the average daily income for May, smoothing out some ups and downs that distort the overall picture. Secondly, the dominance over the box office tops is mainly established by the same games: once there, they stay there.

Taking into account these reservations, it can be concluded that:

• the projected revenue of the game, which occupies the 50th position and higher in the iOS box office top, is $4.4 million / year;
• the projected revenue of the game, which is in the top ten of the iOS box office, is $17.2 million / year.

These figures reflect the upper bar. Only a few games have consistently been in the Top 10 for 12 months. And besides, in practice, No. 5 earns significantly more than No. 10. However, the described approach is of interest as a method of approximate estimation.

Source: www.gamesbrief.com