Best-selling iOS developer: 5% of users make in-app purchases

By on Apr 6, 2011 at 4:46 PM
mobile April 6, 2011

Tap Tap Tap recently announced that it has sold 2 million copies of its popular “Camera+” iPhone photography application. In a blog post, Tap Tap Tap principal John Casasanta noted a couple of compelling figures about sales of the app. First: Just 5% of Camera+ customers purchased the $0.99 “I ♥ Analog” filter each day.  In contrast, more than half of Camera+ users apply new updates within 6 days of a release. Casasanta admitted the low sales could be because Camera+ doesn’t aggressively push the in-app upgrades, but he noted that those in-app purchases pull in about $70k over a 4.5 month period — a figure that’s relatively small compared to Camera+ sales. “There are companies with free photography apps that are trying to have their business models revolve around selling effects via in-app purchases, but it’s very unlikely that this can be an effective business model,” Casasanta said. We’d be interested to know if gaming developers feel the same way.

[Via Apple Insider]

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  • Anonymous

    @Bringit

    Don’t forget to Bring that lube you like me to use when you come tonight.
    Thanks

  • Shldn635

    This doesn’t surprise me at all.

  • sirpaul

    That’s still a lot of money. Wish I knew the app store was going to be big back when it came out – could have made some nice apps! Now everything that is anything less of amazing is drowned out in the huge sea of already-existing apps.

  • Anonymous

    Yeah, this is a kinda pointless report (by the app maker) considering it’s a CAMERA application. What are in app purchases for applications with serious content available (additional songs/levels/items for a game). I don’t expect camera apps to have a lot of people purchasing add ons.

    as for most people upgrading to a new version.. Doesn’t the app store remind you when there is an update?

    • http://www.freeke.org/ffg ffg

      Not to mention, Camera+ competes with a _very_ large number of apps, many of which include the sort of effects enabled by that in-app purchase as part of their base feature set. I own Camera+, but also own Infinicam and Instagram, both of which offer those sorts of effects as part of the base applications. I like Camera+, but I have no real need to buy those effects when I already have those other apps (and Flare on my desktop, besides) I think you can’t extrapolate anything about in-app purchases based on this limited sample.

  • Anonymous

    im not an iOS user, but im very disappointed that in-app purchases came to Android. now apps are getting completely watered down in hopes that people pay for features that should have already been included in the app in the first place. im all for developers making money (heck i purchase apps and donate regularly) but build a strong, quality, COMPLETE app first, then use in-app payments for additional/optional/excess features

    • Anonymous

      Because some Android users (may be most) don’t ever consider a paid app. So some devs would rather release the app as free and require you to pay for everything else subsequently. This so far has worked for games like Smurfs.

      • Anonymous

        i understand, and that’s cool. but my issue is every app doesnt deserve to
        be paid. devs need to stop trying to get rich off of apps that do simple
        brainless features, like wallpaper apps, to-do lists, or anything else that
        doesnt expand the functionality of your phone. it doesnt take much effort to
        develop those kind of apps so developers shouldnt expect much return on
        them. i can understand some free games offering in-app purchases, but in the
        end, when devs release incomplete low-quality apps with the hopes to bank
        off of in app purchases then people begin to look at these apps as schemes,
        and i cant necessarily blame them

  • Anonymous

    I think camera+ is smart to take the head start, but now Instagram has replaced most of my needs for snapshots, and I can share the photos to my friends in a brilliant way!

  • Anonymous

    Alternate headline: horrible feature still manages to sell to 5% of users thru magic of in app purchasing.

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