Small iPhone developer Tapulous sees big success
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IPhone app developer Tapulous says its sales have approached $1 million a month, providing fresh evidence of the growing success of start-ups designing programs for Apple Inc's mobile device.
Context & Ripple Effects
Tapulous has been on the iPhone since the beginning: the App Store drew developers from its mid-2008 opening (iPhone and App Store Attracting Developers), and by early 2009 the store was producing headline-making windfalls for solo coders (half-million-dollar baby). By mid-2009 brands and companies were crowding onto phones (Apps Boom as Companies Seek Space on Phones), turning the store into a mainstream channel rather than a novelty.
What changed with this Reuters piece is scale and credibility at the studio level: Tapulous — maker of Tap Tap Revenge, which had already licensed premium content through its confirmed Nine Inch Nails partnership back in 2008 — says sales are approaching $1 million a month. That moves the story from one-off coder luck to a repeatable business model for funded start-ups.
First-order effects
- Tapulous now has roughly $12 million in annualized run-rate revenue from free-to-download apps monetized through advertising and licensed premium editions — enough to sustain hiring and expansion without depending on paid-app pricing.
- Apple gets its strongest third-party proof point yet that the App Store can support real companies, not just hobbyists, strengthening the iPhone's pitch against rivals courting developers.
Second-order effects
- Other music-game and casual-app studios face pressure to copy the licensed-content model Tapulous validated with Nine Inch Nails, pushing labels and artists toward revenue-sharing deals inside games.
- Venture investors get a benchmark for what an App Store start-up can earn, likely raising valuations and deal flow for small iOS studios throughout 2010.
Third-order effects
- If $1M/month studios keep emerging from a single storefront, mobile app development consolidates as a recognized startup category with its own financing norms — shifting software entrepreneurship away from desktop distribution and toward Apple-controlled platforms.
- The concentration of monetization inside one company's store foreshadows the platform-power questions — revenue splits, approval rules, discoverability — that will define developer-platform relations as rival stores mature.
The trend: Mobile app development is maturing from a 2008 gold-rush curiosity into a durable startup business model, with hit studios proving single-storefront revenues that rival traditional software firms.