It's easy to imagine Apple sitting back and raking in all of the cash generated from the App Store, but according to a recent examination of the statistics, Apple may have only earned between $20 million and $45 million from the App Store for its first one billion downloads.
Lightspeed Venture Partners' Jeremy Lew recently came up with these figures by talking to industry participants regarding their estimate of how many paid applications have been sold. He got estimates that indicated there is about one paid application for every 15 to 40 free applications, so that suggests that about 25-60 million paid applications have been downloaded.
He also needed to find how much the usual paid application sells for. After doing even more research, he found out that according to an
O'Reilly study, the paid application mean price is about $2.65.
After multiplying $2.65 by 25-50 million paid applications, the total revenue from paid applications is around $70-$160 million. Apple only gets 30 percent of that figure, so according to Lew, Apple made around $20-$45 million during the first one billion application downloads at the App Store.
Of course his figures are no where near exact, but it at least gives you an idea as to how much Apple is actually profiting from the App Store itself. Apple has never claimed that the App Store is a money making venture by itself, because just like the iTunes Store, the App Store is intended to sell devices, which is where the big money is at.
