$1M IN APPSTORE REVENUE FOR AUSTRALIAN IPHONE DEVELOPER FIREMINT
Earlier this year at Mobile Monday Melbourne Robert Murray, founder of Melbourne-based iPhone gaming developer Firemint, spoke about the risks of building a handset game from scratch, versus doing mobile development work for overseas based console gaming companies. Firemint mainly create mobile game versions of broader game releases for companies like Electronic Arts and Disney. However, it is their original IP game Flight Control for which they are most widely known.
Flight Control was created last year at an estimated budget of $50,000. Game play centers on challenging users to manipulate and drag aircraft with their iPhone touchscreen to designated airport landing areas. The main challenge is to avoid mid-air collisions of different aircraft which become progressively congested. In Australia Flight Control costs $1.19 to download from the iTunes AppStore (USD $0.99) and has now sold 1.3 million downloads.
Back in February I blogged about elasticity of demand in pricing of iPhone applications. Flight Control has always been very reasonably priced, and early success (including a peak download day in March of 35,000 units) saw them gain a top position in the gaming section of the AppStore. This top position, combined with a low-cost to download has been a potent driver of consistent, albiet diminishing, demand (see below).
As far as we are aware this is by far the most successful Australian iPhone application produced to date, and proof in the strength of the local digital creative community. If you are interested in more of what the lads at Firemint are up to – I highly recommend reading their blog.
