I plan on blogging some detailed numbers soon for all my apps. Here is an example. This app does really well as a free app with ads. I have others that have done better as paid apps.<p>Sticker Draw
Blog post with video
<a href="http://ideaindustries.net/sticker-draw-for-windows-phone-7/" rel="nofollow">http://ideaindustries.net/sticker-draw-for-windows-phone-7/</a><p>Marketplace link to free version
<a href="http://windowsphone.com/s?appid=e80104a9-c243-e011-854c-00237de2db9e" rel="nofollow">http://windowsphone.com/s?appid=e80104a9-c243-e011-854c-0023...</a><p>I targeted the app at kids in the 2-8 year old range. I started out by making it a paid app priced at 1.29$. I released it early February. My thought was there is so much garbage out there something with a little bit of quality might do ok. It didn't. I also had trouble getting press from any of the wp7 sites. I added a free version using pubcenter ads in March as an experiment. I also put a "buy the full version" link on the menu.<p>Paid<p>93 purchases for paid version. It hasn't done well and I haven't seen an uptick from the buy the full version link. I did screw up here. I know some tricks now for getting better numbers for freshly released apps.<p>Ad Supported<p>89k impressions since launch
603$ in revenue
Avg eCPM is 6.82$ (this is abnormally high but pubcenter does have high eCPMS)
I'm getting 600-1000 impressions a day now.<p>As far as the development tools and process...
I work in a shop that does all 3 platforms. I have some experience with Android and even less with iOS but I'm going to say this anyway: Windows Phone has the best platform and tools for mobile development. That may be hard to believe since the platform is so new but Silverlight is great and the tooling is mature.
I have 2 free add supported and 1 paid apps up:<p>Mustachio - <a href="http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=3adc0710-8a86-e011-986b-78e7d1fa76f8" rel="nofollow">http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=3adc071...</a>
Mustachio Pro - <a href="http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=0ed1faf3-4694-e011-986b-78e7d1fa76f8" rel="nofollow">http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=0ed1faf...</a>
Square Attack - <a href="http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=a35d2c6d-eb9a-e011-986b-78e7d1fa76f8" rel="nofollow">http://social.zune.net/redirect?type=phoneApp&id=a35d2c6...</a><p>Mustachio has been up for about 2 months, has about 4.5K downloads, and has made about $80. eCPM is about $1 with 2K impressions per day. Mustachio Pro is a paid version ( $0.99) without ads. It's sold about 70 copies so far.<p>Square Attack has been up for about 2 weeks, has about 2.5K downloads, and has made about $200. When first released, the eCPM climbed to $6-7 but has dropped a lot lately ($1-2). I'm guessing it has something to do with # of new users per day which has also dropped a lot. Square Attack is about 150 in the free games list so it's very hard to find even though its getting pretty good reviews. I'd love to know how the top apps got there since being the top apps list looks like the best way to advertise and the best bet at success.
Of the games powered by mogade.com (they are all WP7 games as far as I know), I can tell you that:<p>-The most unique devices 1 game has seen is 129824 (more than twice the next)<p>-The most game starts a game has seen in a day is 9928<p>-The most unique devices a game has seen in a day is 4914<p>Of course, exactly how/when developers are calling the stats tracking functions, I don't know. For all I know, the guy's got a for loop killing my server on game start...
Well I found some numbers here: <a href="http://www.farseergames.com/blog/2011/5/26/krashlander-numbers.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.farseergames.com/blog/2011/5/26/krashlander-numbe...</a>
App development is great. Unfortunately, I've only ever seen 2 WP7 phones in the wild.<p>The low resale value of WP7 phones on eBay and CL suggests things aren't good, either.
Here's a gamasutra article on the various mobile OSes:<p><a href="http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6440/smartphone_and_tablet_rundown_.php?print=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6440/smartphone_and_ta...</a><p>The interesting quote from the article is from PopCap:<p><i>"It certainly hasn't resonated with consumers as anyone would like," says PopCap's Stein, who uses a WP7 device as his everyday phone. "Given the install base of Windows Phone devices, our games have actually sold quite well, and it monetizes very well for customers who have a Windows Phone. There just aren't enough of them right now."</i>
We released an app around march<p><a href="http://www.bitsabound.com/GlutenFreeRecipes-Windows-Phone-7.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bitsabound.com/GlutenFreeRecipes-Windows-Phone-7....</a><p>There have been sales but not a lot which is expected given its a niche total sales are still sub 3 digits.<p>Development tools and development itself is awesome and I can say that given that I've apps for iPhone as well.<p>I use a WP7 device for daily use and it hasn't disappointed me for any use expect maybe that skype is still not available and MS has let carriers have too much control.
Installed the beta2 the other day. Built the usual hello world app so can't tell much about building larger apps. What I can say is I find the IDE and Emulator really snappy. Visual design is really smooth, much better imo than for example Android development using Eclipse. My $.02
Just based on what I've seen around the net, on a per-user basis WP7 is more profitable for devs than android, but there just aren't enough users. Hopefully that changes soon. 3 competing (and equally large) platforms will be great for users as well as devs.
For the following 6 apps :<p>-Earthquakes Monitor <a href="http://plusapps.eu/Earthquakes-Monitor.html" rel="nofollow">http://plusapps.eu/Earthquakes-Monitor.html</a>
-Frankfurt Airport <a href="http://plusapps.eu/Frankfurt-Airport-Information.html" rel="nofollow">http://plusapps.eu/Frankfurt-Airport-Information.html</a>
-Berlin Airport
-Munich Airport
-Athens Airport
-Child Growth Standards<p>Trial Downloads : 1027<p>Purchases : 295<p>In my opinion the main problem with the Windows Phone Marketplace at the moment is the low sales numbers of devices. With the new version of the OS and the addition of NOKIA hardware Microsoft hopes that they can achieve a bigger market share.
For a reason that I don't know and don't understand, their developer program is not supporting all countries in the world or most of them. That is why I can't start (I want to get into Mobile Development and I know C#), I can't publish my apps.
The development experience has been extremely good. Visual Studio + Expression Blend is perfect for rapidly prototyping apps and fine tuning animations.<p>As for downloads, I've found it's a lot easier to get your app noticed in the smaller marketplace. Also for a while ad revenue was very good. I made $50/day using PubCenter for ads in my games for a few months. After March 2011, however, something in the system changed (or maybe advertisers just started paying less) and my eCPM has dropped a lot.
The smaller audience for W7 is a both a negative and a positive. Negative because (obviously) there are less customer out there. But positive because there is less development competition out there- you could probably carve out a decent niche with a good app.