Could you imagine selling 100,000 copies of an iPhone application, and just how much money that would be in the bank? That’s how many the Bento team has managed to sell in just 6 months. The App, sitting with a $4.99 price tag has both shirked the conventional 0.99 price tag, and managed to keep a price point that’s lucrative to iPhone users. It’s something that they need to be commended for, and it’s certainly something that illustrates the purchasing power of iPhone users. It’s a clear testament to an applications utility, when they can sell that amount of product in that short of a time span.
Just in case you’re short on math skills, that adds up to 499,000 in six short months. Simply Amazing.
As a complete aside, and completely completely unrelated to Bento, How long will these kinds of sales numbers last?
I’ve been spending some time thinking about a key point in 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout, and how it applies to the AppStore. The AppStore was the wild west on opening day, and people with applications ready to launch along side the AppStore were positioned to reap the lions share of purchases. Being first in the market, as Ries and Trout argue in their book, is the best way to insure the success of your business. If you can’t be first in a market, create a new sect of the market, and be first in that market.
The time for new iPhone development teams reaping giant financial gains for application development is quickly coming to a close, there will always be modest reward, but the days of Trism-eqsue rewards are long gone. There will always be sales, and there will always be applications that buck the trend, but for the most part, over night success is long gone.
There’s two groups of developers that will still be able to cash in on the giant market that is the AppStore, those that were there first and were able to gain the fame that comes with being first in the market, and then there are those that have heaps of cash to toss into marketing campaigns. It’s nothing to cry about, it’s the reality of a free market economy. Eventually application saturation is going to make it more difficult to find hidden gems, and the developers of those hidden gems are going to be relying on some breaks just to meet their development bills.
I don’t want this to be all doom and gloom. There’s always a potential for profit, and there’s certainly enough talent making applications that we’ll still see amazing and insightful applications, but the days of immense, and immediate financial reward are long gone, until a new market comes along. *ahem*Tablet*ahem*
