Tuesday, December 1, 2009

November Recap...Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Droid

Android as a mobile OS is finally starting to take off. It's now on at least 2 phones on every major carrier except ATT, and the monster is the Droid. Initial reports indicated that Verizon/Motorola had sold 100K in the first weekend, 250K the first week, and estimated 600K by the end of the year. But new reports indicate those stats were lowballed, and that the Droid has actually sold between 700-800K already and will easily top 1M by the end of the year. Verizon apparently launched a $100M marketing campaign and it looks like it's paying off.

What does this mean for devs? Reports were that revenue from games jumped 53% from September to October. I haven't seen any numbers for November yet, but I'd be surprised if they didn't increase at least another 50%.

Personally, I saw an 80% increase from October to November, mostly on strong sales of Dominoes, but also on a boost from ad revenue. Here's a chart of daily revenue:

Notice the trend, as well. I expect another increase in December...possibly not as large as the one from Oct->Nov, but still an increase. But who knows? Either way I'm enjoying the ride.


Hopefully this means I won't have to worry about departmental funding for graduate school next year. Even if the numbers plateaued, that would still be a decent income for a single-person household. But I still plan on releasing new apps, so we'll see how high we can go and how long it will last.
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2 comments:

  1. EdwardDecember 1, 2009 at 2:12 PM

    Thanks for your post! Can you break down your ad vs. paid sales? I've been thinking about running ads on my app, but don't know if its worth it. This information would be really helpful

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  2. DerekDecember 2, 2009 at 7:19 AM

    I've been using a mixed strategy of ads and paid apps since I started this in March. The revenue breakdown as reliably remained consistent at about 50/50 ads and sales. That was also the case in November.

    I had been using AdMob, but about 6 weeks ago I applied and was accepted into the AdSense for Mobile Application Content beta. The difference was amazing, but since Google just announced they're purchasing AdMob, I don't know how that will affect ad revenue. And the AdSense beta has a desired level of 100K impressions per day. AdMob's SDK was very easy to use, though. There's also MobClix, GreyStripe, and others...don't know much about them. If you've got apps with a ton of usage I'd apply to the AdSense beta. If not, I'd try AdMob and see how it goes.

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