How Much is a Slot on a WWDC Keynote Worth....

... or why developers are falling over themselves to develop for the iPhone and get into the App store!

This post was inspired by a tweet from John Gruber who commented that the indie developer from the UK who developed "Band" and appeared on the WWDC keynote would soon be a Millionaire. I sort of grinned and let that once pass over me but when I did some simple math, he's absolutely right.

Although no pricing for "Band" was mentioned in the keynote, let's assume that he releases it for $9.99 in line with the other applications that were priced accordingly.

His appearance on the keynote and the impressive (yet fun) demo would probably make most people who saw that demo, get the app even if only to show off the capabilities of the iPhone.

Lets go with the current available market of 1st generation iPhones which Steve announced as 6,000,000. We all know that this will surge to a much larger figure once the iPhone 3G is launched, but lets stick with 6,000,000 - the App store will be rolled out to these 6,000,000 iPhones come July and the "Band" application will no doubt be a "featured" app on the App store - as seen on the WWDC keynote.

Now obviously, not everyone will buy it, but at an assumed price of $9.99, it's likely to be an impulse buy for a lot of people. They've seen it demo'd so they know what to expect!

Lets run the theoretical numbers:

So that's even with a highly pessimistic view of only selling to 1% of the current market, the developer has the potential to earn $419,580 USD (with a healthy $179,820 going to Apple)

A potentially more realistic 5% or even 10% sales will generate sales of almost $3,000,000 and $6,000,000 with 70% going direct to the developer (that's $2,097,900 and $4,195,800 respectively).

What's even more amazing is that this is pure profit to the developer after Apple have taken their margin!

No distribution costs, no marketing costs, no credit card fees, nothing, nada, his job is done - OK, there may be support work or enhancing the application, but the bulk of the work is covered. Apple will just write him a big fat juicy cheque at the end of each month.

Now of course, there is no certainty that he will reach those numbers, or even that he will charge $9.99 for his app, so these figures could be well in excess of reality but it's equally uncertain that I've under estimated. The total iPhone market could increase to 18 million within the next 12 months and each iPhone has direct access to the App store and the purchase of the "Band" application is but a single click away for many, many millions of iPhone users.

Good luck to him I say!

Now obviously not all applications will have this level of take up but there will be killer apps developed for the iPhone and the App store is a perfect delivery mechanism to all developers to get their applications out to a huge potential market

Now where's that link to download the SDK?