I worked for around 3 months on FlightPredictor for Android. It’s not a particularly pretty app, but it is very functional, and I am proud of it.
Since I released it 3.5 weeks ago, I have sold a grand total of 20 copies. At $1.99 each, minus Google’s cut and taxes, that amounts to around $20. (and I had to pay $25 to register in the Android Market, so I haven’t even broken even) There’s even FlightPredictor Lite, a free trial version with ads (that have made me 3 cents so far).
On webOS, a platform whose future has been very uncertain since August, and despite the fact that I haven’t released any new apps in a while, and have only made minor updates to FlightPredictor HD (mostly adding airport maps at users’ requests), and there’s no free trial version, I’m still making $10 a day. Obviously there are a lot of factors helping me out there (TouchPad firesale, the fact that FlightPredictor HD is still a featured app and is in Pivot), but maaan. If I wanted to optimize for revenue, I should have doubled-down (ahem) on webOS.
I guess that makes FlightPredictor for Android somewhat of a labor of love, which is odd since I don’t plan on getting an Android phone. It was fun to learn how to make an Android app, though, even if it was frustrating at times.
The Windows Phone version is coming along slowly (busy time of year), and I’m hoping playing around with a developer phone will give me more ideas of how apps generally work on WP7.
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