10 Most Lucrative iPhone Apps

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The iPhone App Store: These Apps Are the Big Winners for Apple

The Washington Post recently reported that Apple has made as much as $45 million from the sales of iPhone apps. However, the true profit for Apple has been in iPhone sales, stimulated by the more than 50,000 apps available in the App Store. Fortune reports that the iPhone’s sales increased by a remarkable 245% in 2008. The availability of an app for just about everything is widely believed to be the driving force behind these sales numbers.

This led us to wonder which apps are helping Apple the most. We’ve gathered this information together into a top 10 List of apps contributing to Apple’s coffers. We used a variety of sources to come up with our conclusions:

The iTunes “Thanks a Billion” page: This page lists the all-time top 20 paid app and top 20 free app downloads from Apple’s App Store. Keep in mind that this doesn’t give us sales figures or download totals, just a list from one through 20 of the most downloaded paid apps and the most downloaded free apps.
Discussions with developers: Although we can’t release exact sales figures, these talks have helped point us in the right direction.
The price of each app (some top-paid apps are $0.99, while some are over $5.00).
The iTunes top 20 downloads for 2008.
The iTunes top 20 downloads for recent weeks.
Media reports on Apple’s App Store.
The knowledge that Apple gets to keep 30% of all sales revenue from applications sold via iTunes. The developer keeps the other 70%.

Please keep in mind that this list represents our best estimation of the iPhone’s most lucrative applications. Some entries on this list may surprise you, just as they surprised us. If you feel you know of something we didn’t include, we invite your feedback. Please leave your tips, suggestions, and comments below.

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4

anonymous@guest , June 11, 2009 2:08 AM

Maybe people don't realize the pure amount of drivel created on the internet nowadays. Having a $99 dollar fee to put up any app, including free ones, limits the selection to those created by people with the earnestness to create something remotely worthwhile. If anybody could create an app and put it up for free, there would be no way for apple to sort through the shear number of crap programs. It would turn the app store into youtube; a few thousand videos worth watching in a sea of millions of idiots with camera phones.
1

TCeleste , June 11, 2009 5:45 AM

"Maybe people don't realize the pure amount of drivel created on the internet..."

Rest assured that I'm painfully aware of the drivel. But it's important to keep in mind that Apple has a process in place for screening apps (and yes, that process needs some fine tuning).

My opinion is that this process should be what weeds out the useful from the drivel. To me, the $99 fee just weeds out lower income developers, and those willing to create low price or free apps.
0

Steven Bancroft , June 15, 2009 9:33 PM

TCelesteActually, living in a college dorm, or just being laid off, may be sufficient for $99 to be a lot of cash. I think there's a bit of a double standard at play here.I know it's not possible because of the licensing, but what would happen if Linus Torvalds suddenly demanded $99 from everyone wanting to develop a Linux application? The entire open source community would be up in arms (and rightfully so, in my opinion). What about if Bill Gates demanded $99 from every Windows developer? He'd be accused (again, rightfully so) of abusing his position to pilfer $99 from every Windows developer. But Steve Jobs gets a free ride, no questions asked, like it's some kind of corporate entitlement.

Sorry, this is what I meant to quote.

10 Most Lucrative iPhone Apps–for Apple

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