Small iPhone developer Tapulous sees big success
An advertisement for the Apple iPhone is shown at a retail store of an Orange mobile phone network provider in Bordeaux, southwestern France, October 23, 2009.
Credit: Reuters/Regis Duvignau
SAN FRANCISCO |
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - IPhone app developer Tapulous says its sales have approached $1 million a month, providing fresh evidence of the growing success of start-ups designing programs for Apple Inc's mobile device.
Tapulous -- with a mere 20 employees -- said its "Tap Tap Revenge" game series has now been installed more than 20 million times, with more than 600 million total games played.
Earlier this year, research group comScore said the game had been installed by one-third of Apple app users.
The company says it's profitable, but it won't reveal precise sales data. Tapulous' chief executive said he expects it to ride a wave of exponential growth in mobile app commerce in the next two years, similar to that seen recently by social gaming companies like Zynga, Playfish and Playdom.
Playfish was recently acquired by Electronic Arts for $275 million in cash.
"It's going to be big and all of a sudden people are going to say, 'holy cow, where did those guys come from?'" said CEO Bart Decrem.
The install base for app developers is growing fast. Apple has sold more than 50 million iPhones and iPod touches, which use the same software.
Tapulous raised $2.8 million from investors, which include such notables as Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and venture capital firm Khosla Ventures.
Tapulous generates sales by charging for some games, through ads, and by selling songs through its games.
(Reporting by Gabriel Madway; Editing by Gary Hill)
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What’s most interesting to me is the ever evolving applications. Take for example Tabulous and their game model a closed game where you buy music to play. This is soon going to be out dated by apps like Audio Puzzle and other apps taking advantage of the new technologies available in firmware 3.
What’s interesting about Audio Puzzle is that the company behind it is a very creative company going places no one has gone before. Audio Puzzle is a game for your own music library! What this small program is doing is taking your own music – music you love, breaking it up into a musical puzzle. You must work out the order of the peaces to win. I think this is one of the new wave of apps coming and we are fare away from maturity in the mobile gaming area.
I know Tabulous is going to adopt to this and conquer but it’s the little companies that pave the way.
Probably the best thing for companies like Tabulous is to buy them :-) And expand upon their creative thinkin.
You throw any game on “there’s an app for that” TV commercial and they’re going to be successful.
Thinking I might just invest this way.
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