I met Sander recently, who created the iPhone App game iSjoel. Its a Dutch game obviously and when it was released in the Netherlands in February it stayed on the number one spot for a few weeks in the Netherlands iTunes App Store.
iSjoel is a very Dutch game, you get a pile of wooden round pucks, and you aim to shoot them across the board into one of the four holes to earn points. iSjoel, the iPhone App, is actually a very addictive game, because you’ll realize that due to the dynamics of the game it isn’t as easy as it apparently looks. For me, even after many game plays I only managed 115 points.
Well, since iSjoel costs less than a bar of snickers, its quite a nice deal to check out and to save time.
The payouts though, seem to belong to the Belastingdienst – or the Dutch Tax Office.
Assuming an App costs 0.99USD:
- Apple gets 30% = 0.30USD
- Developer get 70% = 0.70USD (Yeah right!)
Belastingdienst first takes away 52% or something like that, so effectively that leaves only 48% or about a mere 0.34USD for the Dutch developer. Assuming that if you manage to get on the top ten in the Netherlands, not International mind you! And that you get an high profile which hopefully people will download. If you don’t get onto the list, well, you can blog about it and maybe get slashed dot. (For the record, the price point of Dapple is too high – initial 4.99USD for it? Even after Slashdot.org he sold 17 units that day. Well Myst is going for 4.99USD, and Myst is well.. legendary)
So assuming that it sells about 10K units on the App Store for its entire run, since it stayed on the top one for 2-3 weeks. Netherlands have x number of iPhones wandering around, with x-y Credit Cards registered with the App Store, so make an estimate.
That makes about a profit of (0.99 * 0.7 * 0.48)*10,000 = 3326USD? Well, it won’t make you rich, but it is nice, since you would probably have gained the expertise of Cocoa and Obj-C for iPhone App number 2. Well, it also means that the Tax Office is taking away too much.
Its something to think about if one wants to launch an App on the iPhone App Store. Really.
Otherwise, back to iSjoel:
Usability: 4/5
Fun: 3.5/5
Would I buy it: 4/5 (I already did!)
