Apple has announced there have been 50 billion app downloads from its App Store. The App Economy is upon us and if you want to participate you better start thinking in rather large numbers.

After all, sell a computer –or car for that matter– these days and make 5%, but sell your app through Apple’s App Store and you get 70%.

It sounds like a “no-brainer”. Right? But is it really that simple?

Apparently, it can be. My favourite app success story is the oft repeated one that burst onto the pages of the San Francisco newspapers as we were lining up for yet another Steve Jobs Keynote at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco a few years ago. 

Eddie Marks had coded an app that made the sound of a shotgun being cocked and fired. C'est tout. Talk about K.I.S.S. The app was FREE. In the first year, Eddie received more than a million dollars from Apple because of the ads that appeared in that free app. After the first million, Eddie said he stopped counting!

So if there is an App for everything how about everybody makes an app? After all Apple has done everything it can to remove traditional barriers in production and distribution. Apple’s Xcode development environment is free and a developer membership with the ability to upload to the App Store is only $99/year. Why isn’t everybody doing it?

Maryland couple Shawn and Stephanie Grimes tried it. For two years. They left their jobs and financed development by selling their car, renting out their house and moving in with friends. Even cashing in Shawn’s 401(k). “I’ll retire when I die” vowed Shawn.

The goal was a new app a month. The reality was $200,000 in lost income and savings, and according to the New York Times, eight apps that earned a combined total of $4,964. Not exactly the magic 70%.

What is missing from the equation? In the App Economy you will not need to invest in a bricks and mortar factory. Likewise, you will not need to ship product to a bricks and mortar warehouse and take returns. Nor will you have to sell through a bricks and mortar storefront. Just give Apple 30% and people will be able to tap their phone with a single finger to download your app.

But getting their finger to tap YOUR app? Apple hasn’t changed the rules of marketing. And whatever you might have thought of him, Apple’s Steve Jobs was a genius at it. Are you?

A software developer at a recent MacTech conference in Los Angeles explained it to me this way: He wasn’t a coder but he did have an idea for an app. So he paid developers in India an absurdly low price to create his software. His idea exploited a temporary gap in features of PDF viewing on phones. He got good reviews and was featured on the App Store for a week. He was able to pull in profit of around $40,000 in the first year.

So the marketing equation was solved -at least temporarily. But successful app developers may soon find that keeping the marketing engine going is like riding a unicycle while juggling chain saws.

While the cost of his app was only $1.99, the low barrier to entry meant that every Tom, Dick and Harry on 5 continents was ready to give him their 2 bucks worth of advice on how his app SHOULD be working. And, in the online world where 30 seconds is a lifetime, if he couldn’t instantly respond to the complaints the result was instant dissatisfaction. So, 24/7/365 he found himself needing to support that project lest a tardy email reply lead to a bad review on the App Store put an end to the gravy train.

Success in the App Economy seems to imply a maximum amount of polish to a product that sells for a minimum in price. If it happens to rake in a million dollars in the first year then you can hire staff to apply that polish. But if it earns $4,000? Or even $40,000. Can you afford to be on it 24/7/365?

Caution: Super large numbers may appear larger than they are in the App Economy’s rear view mirror.

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