Coder's Half-Million-Dollar Baby Proves iPhone Gold Rush Is Still On
Ethan Nicholas, developer of a tank artillery game called iShoot, told Wired.com he quit his job the day his app rose to No. 1 in the App Store, earning him $37,000 in a single day.
"I'm not going to be a millionaire in the next month, but I'd be shocked if it didn't happen at the end of the year," he said in a phone interview. "If it weren't for taxes I would be a millionaire right now."
Until recently, there has been no realistic way for individual programmers to make serious money on their own. Most of the software market is dominated by big companies, and the traditional distribution method for independent developers — shareware — isn't conducive to striking it rich. By contrast, Apple's iTunes App Store provides a platform for marketing, selling and distributing software; all a developer needs to provide is a good idea and some working code.
Nicholas' success story proves that there's still plenty of potential to strike it rich in Apple's seven-month-old App Store. In September, iPhone developer Steve Demeter said he made $250,000 in just two months with his puzzle game Trism.
"I'm not going to be a millionaire in the next month, but I'd be shocked if it didn't happen at the end of the year," he said in a phone interview. "If it weren't for taxes I would be a millionaire right now."
Until recently, there has been no realistic way for individual programmers to make serious money on their own. Most of the software market is dominated by big companies, and the traditional distribution method for independent developers — shareware — isn't conducive to striking it rich. By contrast, Apple's iTunes App Store provides a platform for marketing, selling and distributing software; all a developer needs to provide is a good idea and some working code.
Nicholas' success story proves that there's still plenty of potential to strike it rich in Apple's seven-month-old App Store. In September, iPhone developer Steve Demeter said he made $250,000 in just two months with his puzzle game Trism.
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