The Sparrow Problem

Sparrow did everything right. They built an incredible email app with broad appeal and released it into the hottest software market the world has ever seen. And yet it was a financial flop.

Flop? Yes. There have been whispers and conjecture to that effect over the past few days, but no one has been able to prove it. I can. I happen to have launched a $2.99 utility in the App Store last month and have a pretty good frame of reference for estimating Sparrow’s App Store revenue.

Interesting insight into the world of app development from App Cubby.

Comments

[Neil]

Interesting, although based predominantly on one month's worth of data from one application.

Better than mere speculation, of course, but not a huge amount more so?

[Jaam Gans]

there problem was it was the wrong market. Might have fared better in Android where a lot of people do use alternative e-mail clients, though I suspect price might have caused it to fail in android too, as there are some very good free alternatives. At £1 and if it was better than K9 I would buy it..