$1 Million A Month? Business Is Booming From Apple App Store

The App Store, which recently passed the 100,000 application milestone and is according to most projections headed for at least 200,000 in 2010, has been a runaway success for Apple, as much cultural institution by now as business triumph.

But it's also been a boon for companies like Tapulous, which has 20 employees and, according to Reuters, is pulling down $1 million in sales a month -- all by creating and selling applications for iPhone and iPod Touch. Apple's cut of that loot, by the way, is 30 percent based on the 70/30 iPhone Developer Program terms.

Granted, companies like Tapulous are the exception, not the rule. But they aren't alone, either. Gogii, for example, has seen huge success with the application TextPlus, which according to The Los Angeles Times has been downloaded more than 2.3 million times since its June 2009 debut. Gogii's success, in fact, has led more than one observer to declare a new wave of tech giants is emerging around the application development ecosystem.

Watch for the continued emergence of the mobile channel and the strength of the overall market for mobile applications -- Apple, Google Android, you name it -- to be one of the big stories in 2010.

The Android Market, although dwarfed by Apple's App Store, is itself growing at rapid clip, having recently hit the 20,000 apps mark. Its offerings are expected to more than double by the end of next year. And Apple, for its part, is attracting increasingly more varied and interesting types of application development: from United Healthcare's recently debuted doctor-finder DocGPS app, to Raytheon's motion tracker and positioning apps for soldiers in on-the-ground mission scenarios.