A survey of iOS developers by Canadian indie developer Owen Goss has shown that – in terms of lifetime revenue – the top 20 percent of iOS developers are earning approximately 97 percent of all the game revenue made on the Apple App Store. Goss, the founder of Streaming Color Studio and a former dev at EA Canada, reached out to 252 iOS developers for the survey.
The top 1 percent of iOS game developers earn over a third of all that cold, digital revenue. In contrast, the bottom 80 percent of iOS devs are splitting a mere 3 percent of all App Store game revenue between one another.
25 percent of iOS studios audited made more than $30,000 in lifetime revenue, while the bottom 20 percent have made less than $200. Another 25 percent admitted to making between $1,000 and $10,000 overall.
Finally, developers who bit the bullet and teamed up to create titles earned more revenue than those who went at it alone.
Perhaps iOS is not the land of milk and honey for a fledging developer? It’s becoming a really crowded market out there.
