The Year in Review

I started selling Android apps in March 2009. I thought it would be a nice way to supplement my graduate school stipend. By the end of the year I ended up earning more from Android apps than I get from my stipend.

Here's revenue by month for 2009:

The summer months were spent working on my ADC2 entry, Relativia, with no new releases. Things really started to pick up at the end of the year. Three things happened:

1) At the end of September, I applied for and was accepted into the AdSense for Mobile Application Content Beta. Ad revenue started to swell.

2) In October I released Dominoes. It shot up to the top 5 in Cards & Casino and has consistently stayed in the top 1 or 2 position for the past month.

3) The Motorola/Verizon Droid was released on November 6th. On my apps with analytics, Droid users now make up over 12% of the user base. This is a pretty big chunk in less than two months. They're selling a lot of Droids.

Here is daily income for the month of December:

It's a pretty weird pattern, with a big spike a few days before Christmas, but flattening out on and after Christmas. I'm okay with the flattening, as long as the numbers stay where they're at.

Of course, up is always nice too.

Google has a press conference slated for Jan. 5th, where they're expected to publicly announce the Nexus One, which is supposedly Google's pure Android experience, not adapted by a carrier or manufacturer. The phone is expected to be supported through T-Mobile. Hopefully it will be as or more successful than the Droid.

Even if it isn't, I expect to see sustained growth in the Android user base. The new Sony Ericsson XPERIA is also expected to be a very nice device, and that's due to be released early this year. Acer apparently has a whole slew of Android devices they plan to release this year as well.

So I expect 2010 to be a big year for Android, and hopefully a big year for Polyclef. I've got tons of apps and games in the pipeline, while I continue to see an increase in both ads and sales revenue of my existing apps.

Stay tuned, and see you on the other side of 2010.