AdMob Claim That iPhone App Market $2.4 Billion Annually Slammed by Developers, Analysts
Claims by a San Mateo, California mobile ad agency that iPhone app sales average $200 million a month have been contested by developers, analysts and industry observers.
In a report released on Friday, AdMob said it based its figures showing a $2.4 billion-a-year app market upon a survey of 380 iPhone and 347 iPod Touch users between August 14 and August 21.
“Do the math and that’s a ridiculous claim,” Twittered developer Layton Duncan of Polar Bear Farm, an iPhone developer based in New Zealand.
The math Duncan spoke of was dividing AdMob’s $2.4 billion figure by the approximately 65,000 apps in the App Store, reported Cult of Mac, resulting in about $37,000 income per app.
App developer and App Store-watcher David Bernhard of App Cubby, a developer in Austin, Texas, told Cult of Mac that most apps sell in the single digits per day, and quite a few don’t sell at all. He added that it wouldn’t surprise him to learn that the top 100 iPhone apps gross as much as all other apps combined.
Bernhard said he thought the AdMob figure was five times too big.
“I’ve spoken with other developers who have apps in the top 100 lists of various other categories,” he says. “My rough, but informed estimation: The App Store grosses between $250 and $500 million per year.”
An analyst with Yankee Group, which is preparing its own forecast of US smartphone app store revenues, told Cult of Mac in an email that it felt AdMob’s $2.4 billion was “much too high.”
Comments
Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
