Over the past couple of months, Pinch Media has met with dozens of iPhone developers, including many running their own businesses – a lot of people are hoping to earn enough from their applications to support themselves and families. When an independent developer releases an iPhone application, a lot is at stake – if the application is a hit, the application developer might become wealthy, but if the application isn’t spreading virally and sales slow to a trickle, all of the developer’s work might be for very little. Developers need to know this information in a very timely fashion so they can make informed decisions. If an application is doing nicely, it might be time to move onto the next project or begin marketing it to a broader audience. If an application’s stalled, it might be time to adjust the application’s price point or take steps to improve the application’s content. The sooner you can act with confidence, the better.
At this stage, we can’t discuss sales statistics available from the AppStore – although we can point to commentary elsewhere. However, we can talk about our latest improvements to Pinch Analytics, our analytics suite for iPhone SDK applications – the addition of new user tracking and sales estimates. Developers who install our free Pinch Analytics code now get reporting, updated hourly, on the number of first-time users of their applications. Developers of paid applications can provide us with the cost of their application and we’ll do the sales estimates, factoring in Apple’s share of the revenue and telling you just what we think you’re making. Apple writes the checks, so our numbers aren’t official, but we hope they’ll be close enough to allow you to make informed decisions. Pinch Analytics is free to use and easy to install – if you’re interested, just sign up for an account.