In these two years of App Store we’ve read many stories of indie developers making tons of bucks out of apps sales. Still, I’ve noticed a trend recently, and that’s why the news of Camera+ generating over $250.000 in revenue matters: if you look at the App Store Top Paid charts, you’ll see lots of games in there.

So the question is: is still possible to be successful in the App Store even without developing a game? Apparently, it is.

So this time, instead on relying on MacHeist’s mailing list (which counts more than 600.000 subscribers) they decided to do everything on their own and promote the app using Tap Tap Tap’s system, which has 70.000 members. This is the only “advertising” they’ve done.

About sales:

“The total number sold for the first month was over 217k. Our total revenue after Apple’s cut was just over $253k. Our strongest revenue day occurred about a week after launch with us taking in $15,488 that day and we averaged around $8,440 daily for the first 30 days.

The only real expenses we had since launching Camera+ were for the launch promo prize (around $10k) plus a few hundred dollars for our “photo of the week” contest prizes.

Camera+ did very well in the US early on, reaching as high as #7 in the Top Paid chart and #5 in Top Grossing. But it actually fell off the Top 100 Paid chart faster than our past apps. Whereas Convert and Voices both stayed up for around two whole months each, Camera+ got knocked out in just three weeks.

So, back to the 60-70% US figure… for Camera+, the breakdown was actually 37% for US sales. This is obviously a huge difference. We’ve had days where international sales completely obliterated US ones… as in around under 2.5% US.”

This is impressive, and well deserved. I downloaded Camera+ last week when it added iPhone 4 support and I have to say it’s one of the best 3rd party photography apps I’ve ever tried. Hands down. Its mix of well-thought design, simple yet effective workflow and gorgeous effects and filters make it stand out from the crowd of poorly designed, feature-creep applications currently available in the App Store.

We’ll review Camera+ for iPhone later this week. In the meantime, congratulations Tap Tap Tap.

Via| macstories.net

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I was very excited when I refreshed Engadget for the 283rd time on the morning of the WWDC and officially knew the new iPhone would be getting 720p video recording. I knew it wouldn’t come close to our 7D, but it might actually be useful for something. Who knows. So no sooner than I got my “phone” in the mail, I had it covered in gaffer’s tape, attached to our 7D and Steadicam Merlin.

So, do I believe this is a viable filmmaking tool? No. I think without at least some real control over exposure, you would have to make some huge compromises in the way you tell your story. But that isn’t to say the iPhone is useless in filmmaking. Having such decent quality in your pocket will make it that much easier to frame up shots, scout locations, and even document the process. It’s a great little camera.

Finally, since I had my iPhone connected to my 7D (mostly for added weight), I recorded both at the same time for fun. Please please please take note that I was mainly focusing on the iPhone and didn’t really check the exposure or even the focus in some shots on the 7D so don’t take this comparison to heart. It wasn’t my intention to shoot video with the 7D at the same time, but here it is anyway:

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