iPhone dev tap tap tap releases sales figures

John Casasanta from iPhone app shop tap tap tap has released the company's sales data for the week of 7/28/08 to 8/3/08. John is one of the guys behind MacHeist, and as such has a history of being open about sales figures; still, releasing this information is a bold move.

Although the only available data was for the last week of sales (though the tap tap tap blog says it will be updated if they get access to past figures), it is still really interesting to to gauge the figures and evaluate, at least to a small degree, how one publisher is doing at the App Store.

For tap tap tap's two applications, this is the breakdown:

Where to Go (App Store link) sold 3193 copies at $2.99 a copy in seven days.
Tipulator (App Store link) sold 353 copies at $.99 a copy in seven days.

After Apple's cut, tap tap tap's revenue was nearly $7000 for the week. Not too shabby. Even on this micro scale, this is further evidence of the long-term market viability for iPhone applications. This isn't surprising, but it is nice to have some solid sales data to backup the download tallies.

Furthermore, John discusses the relative marketing costs associated with iPhone apps as compared to traditional software. So far anyway, it appears that lower upfront promotional costs are needed to ensure a good return. Of course, we're still in the first month of iPhone app sales, as more and more apps come to the store and the "newness" factor starts to wane, marketing costs will likely have to increase.

The future of the App Store is exciting and this kind of news is encouraging, especially in light of some of the snake-oil applications that threaten to turn the App Store into Palm Store 2.0.


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