iFart Mobile, an iPhone application developed by Infomedia that’s used to make fart noises, has rocketed to the top 5 overall in Apple’s app store. Thanks to some much-appreciated transparency on the part of Infomedia there is publicly available information regarding how ranking affects sales of iPhone apps. Since it was first available on December 12, this is how iFart’s ranking has progressed:
Dec.12–#70 in Entertainment–75 units sold
Dec.13–#16 in Entertainment–296 units sold
Dec.14–#76 overall, #8 in Entertainment–841 units sold
Dec.15–#39 overall, #5 in Entertainmnet–1510 units sold
Dec.16–#22 overall, #3 in Entertainment–1797 units sold
Dec.17–#15 overall, #3 in Entertainment–2836 units sold
Dec.18–#10 overall, #3 in Entertainment–3086 units sold
Dec.19–#9 overall, #2 in Entertainment–3117 units sold
Dec.20–#4 overall, #2 in Entertainment–5497 units sold
Mobile Orchard’s Peter Cooper crunched the numbers and found that the $0.99 iFart, after Apple’s 30 percent commission, brought in $13, 205 in its first 9 days. These numbers reveal a couple of interesting things. First of all, iPhone users are easily amused. They also reveal that to sell 1000 units per day, an app has to be in the vicinity of #50 overall. Of course, it’s tough to know if this is a reliable number–we’d have to see many more samples to average things out. But interesting nonetheless.
Recently, iPhone app developer Craig Hockenberry kicked off a huge internet discussion after he published an open letter to Steve Jobs complaining the plethora of cheap apps rising in the app store rankings. He feels that higher-quality apps that need to be priced higher than $0.99 are getting the shaft and making it difficult for developers to earn money. I agree that there are a lot of cheap and poorly developed apps available, but with the release of these numbers, maybe Hockenberry will have a better idea of what he needs to do to line his pockets with cash.
And hopefully this will spur other developers to release their numbers.
