It’s no secret that the App Store is a highly competitive market. It’s tougher than ever for developers to make a real profit, and most of the revenue is grabbed by big development companies that can afford major advertising costs. There are still, however, some success stories, and Redlaser is the latest one.
Redlaser has been one of the top 5 paid apps for over 3 months now without any advertising or marketing whatsoever. The app has been able to reach over 750,000 downloads and bring in over $1m of revenue to Occipital and its 2 developers, but what’s their secret?
In their opinion, their success is mainly due to word-of-mouth. They simply made an app that works well and brings some real value to its users. This actually allowed them later on to be featured in Martha Stewart’s TV show and the Wall Street Journal, which brought them an extra 1,000 apps sold per day.
On top of that, Occipital is now licensing their scanning technology to 12 other apps, which brings them an additional $.10 every time one of them gets sold.
So congrats! Three months at the top of the App Store is really impressive, especially for an indie developer.
We reviewed RedLaser, so make sure to check it out.
You can learn more about them over here.
I purchased this app based on the recommendation of a friend. I wanted to use it to compare the prices of Blu-ray discs in the stores to the prices on Amazon.com. Worked great. Within a days of my purchase there was an update and search results no longer include Amazon. When I purchased, Amazon was included in the description. Bait and switch!
They were the only app in appstore allowed to use private function UIGetScreenImage for a long time. So it was unfair competition and no wonder they got such results.
What I like is they are willing to sell the tech to other developers…
SO….
Grocery iQ incorporated it for adding items to a grocery list. IT SO RAWKS.
I hope developers learn that if they create something good…WE WILL COME!
This app is a wonderful addition to my iphone. I was very well thought out
I like to see app that are not just thrown together as fast as they can to make a buck. This one is worth it. Thanks!
This clearly shows that the reign of the crapp is just about ovah!
I agree with Myztero. It sucks that they removed the Amazon results. I wonder what their reasoning behind this was. That said, their bar code recognition technology they use is fantastic.