The iPhone has inspired a 2nd economy, says Chubby Brain, with over $100 Million going from VCs to iPhone startups.
When the iPhone was initially released in mid-2007, there were only 500 applications available for download. Today, less than two years after the iPhone’s launch, there are more than 50,000.
Apple reports over one billion downloads. Multiply that by a buck.
After a look into the ChubbyBrain database, we identified $102.49 million in total VC/angel investment divided amongst 17 iPhone application startups (as of June 29, 2009).Perhaps this $100M+ number isn’t surprising given conversation that the iPhone may be bigger than the PC, but over $100 million in the span of less than two years for iPhone predicated startups is noteworthy.
Or perhaps for some of you, this number is a lot less than you expected?
Our $100 million number focuses on those startups who are tethering themselves in a large way to the iPhone platform.
So far, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers leads the way with $50 million committed across six startups. This is, in large part, due to the $100 million iFund they launched in March 2008 with the specific goal to target the quickly expanding iPhone app market.
The NY Times asks, Is there a $100 million mobile app out there? That what Chip Hazard, a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, asked a panel of mobile industry veterans during the National Venture Capitalist Association annual meeting in Boston earlier this year.
Rich Miner, one of the managing directors of Google Ventures, the recently formed venture capital arm of the company, said the issue was still a murky one.
They’ll make the guy in the garage happy and some angels very happy, he said. But venture capitalists want to be able to sell the company to another company or to the public in an initial public offering to get a return on their investment. “I’m not sure those venture style exits exist,” he said.
But who cares, really, as long as iShoot’s creator Ethan Nicholas brought in $800,000 in five months on his creation.
MocoNews mentions the small Australian developer Firemint which sold over 700,000 copies of its $0.99 iPhone app “Flight Control” since its March debut, netting the company some $693,000.
AdMob says Apple has sold a total of 30 million combined iPhones and iPod touches. Their data suggests that about 75 percent of those are sold in the US with two-thirds of the combined iPhones and iPod touches using the mobile Web or applications. That results in a total of 15 million mobile Web users for Apple in the US. Give or take. T-Mobile reported last month it sold 1 million Android phones in the U.S. since the G1’s launch in October 2008.
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 conductive to striking it rich.
By contrast, iPhone App Store, Android Market, Blackberry App World, Windows Mobile Marketplace, Palm App Catalog and Nokia Ovi Store are opening new frontiers. They provide a platform for marketing, selling and distributing software; all a developer needs to provide is a good idea and some working code. The Guardian explains How to become an iPhone developer in eight easy steps.
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