Should An iPhone App Developer Charge Or Run Ads? (Galaxy Impact Case Study)
Interesting post with limited stats on whether it is profitable to charge for an iphone app, or to just have advertising.
The problems with there stats is they started out free with no ads, then later charged .99, and when the downloads dropped dramatically, they went back to free, but this time with ads. So even though they now have ads, their install base with the ads is relatively small compared to the overall install base of the application.
Another problem is this app is a re-hash of the old break bricks game I used to play on my Atari back in the day. An app I myself would be less likely to pay for since it isn't new or original.
Overall though, it is nice to see a company be public about their numbers. I would like to see more hard stats (even though no overall conclusions can be reached) then opague stats and posts like "developer makes million dollars a month on iPhone app" or "Ad network say some of their clients make $250,000 a day" with absolutely nothing to back it up.
Update 3-25-09: Here is some more good info on indie game development (via) and the market for older game clones on the iphone.
Update 4-7-09: Here is an inspiring article about some freelance game programmers that made serious money making an iPhone game