Joel Comm’s iFart app has netted him close to £250,000 to date – not bad for an app that recreates the sound of flatulence.Ĭomm’s company InfoMedia came up with the idea in 2008 and within its first fortnight on sale it had sold more than 110,000 apps at 60p each and was the best-selling iPhone app for several weeks after its launch in December 2008. The company said its technology “will live on through other products and apps”. He said: “12 weeks might be a record of sorts from start-up to exit.”Ĭahan was made a vice-president of Yahoo after the sale but last month IntoNow was closed. Three months after starting the company which created the app, Cahan, right, sold it to Yahoo for between £12million and £18 million. IntoNow worked like song- identifying app Shazam, scanning the television’s audio waves to detect what is being watched and then sharing the information with friends and family. In January 2011 Adam Cahan thought up a social networking tool that allowed people to tell others what TV shows they were watching. It was just a month old when Dropbox, an online storage service, bought the app. The iPhone app allowed users to organise emails – deleting or archiving them – by swiping them, the ultimate aim being an empty mailbox. Gentry Underwood’s mailbox app was not even available for download when he sold it for £60 million. Summly reached nearly one million downloads before Yahoo bought it. His first try at a news summary app attracted investors who pumped £182,000 into developing it. His first basic app FingerMill – a treadmill for fingers – made him £76 on its first day. Nick, from London, taught himself basic programming “as a hobby” after Apple’s App Store opened in 2008. If you could come up with a summary for Twitter, that would be awesome.” He said: “I was using Twitter on my phone, and realised there was a massive gap between the link on the tweet and the full story. Last year, aged 17, he sold his iPhone app Summly to yahoo for an estimated £18 million. Nick D’Aloisio was just 15 when he came up with an idea to summarise news stories to save readers trawling through lots of text on smartphone screens. With hired help to created the 2D and 3D imagery, Flick Football was a huge success, with almost six million downloads to date. A follow-up, Flick Football Super Save, saw the player become goalie instead. The 59p app’s idea was simple – to score goals by curving the ball David Beckham-style around a wall. With business partner Mark Allen, Oli worked on several ideas for games and began developing the most likely success, Flick Football, with an eye on the upcoming 2010 World Cup. So I thought, let’s leave and give it a go.” If a 59p game got 100,000 downloads, it would make £59,000. He said: “The iPhone catapulted the opportunities to make money from gaming. Oli Christie was working in advertising when the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 changed everything. It has an estimated current value of more than £3billion. Launched in December 2009, the game’s success saved ailing Rovio and saw its staff numbers rise from nine to more than 150. When my mother saw Angry Birds, she wasn’t too surprised – she just said that I’d been drawing pigs since I was in school.” He explained: “We required an enemy and for some reason I’ve been drawing pigs for a long time. They agreed on Angry Birds, a game where birds are slung into the air to kill egg-stealing pigs. He focused on what was popular at the time, namely “two-dimensional physics-based” games – “especially the kind where you launched something in the air”. Angry Birds helped Finns fly againįinnish games firm Rovio was facing bankruptcy when designer Jaakko Iisalo pitched “lots of ideas” to save the company. Here are some of the apps that rocked the world. The more a game is played, the more advertising they can sell and the value skyrockets.” “But if someone does strike gold, the rewards are huge. “For every app that earns millions there are countless others earning little or nothing. “These instances of people becoming millionaires are very rare,” he says. The amount of cash generated by such a simple idea seems incredible but the world of app-making is not always a gold rush, says technology writer Rob Temple. Phones with the app installed have now been listed on eBay at up to £1million. Now millions of players are mourning its loss after creator Dong Nguyen deleted the game – even though it was raking in £30,000 a day in advertising.įlappy Bird, which launched in May, had been downloaded more than 50 million times, making it the most popular mobile phone game this year. Fiendishly addictive, simple to play and free to download, Flappy Bird was a smartphone smash hit.
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