iPhone Developer: I Just Made $250K From App Store In Two Months (AAPL)

Ed: The largest Microsoft Mobile customer is HTC. HTC just released the Google Android phone with T-Mobile. Can Microsoft sustain it's 18 million rate?

Will the Apple iPhone become the largest smartphone supplier in two years? from a zero base.

Where Is Microsoft's Smartphone? Everywhere, Says Redmond

from Silicon Alley Insider by Dan Frommer

The smartphone wars are set for this holiday season: Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 3G versus new BlackBerry gadgets from Research In Motion (RIMM), and now Google's 'G1' Android GPhone. Oh -- and dozens of gadgets running Microsoft's Windows Mobile.

Unlike Apple or RIM, which design both their phones and operating system, Microsoft (MSFT) has been taking a different approach for several years -- focusing on the OS and letting partners figure out what the gadget will do and where it'll sell. This is sort of what Google's doing with Android and its Open Handset Alliance.

Despite having its own gadget design teams -- which make the Zune and Xbox -- Microsoft has "no plans to build our own phone," says Scott Rockfeld, group product manager for Windows Mobile. "Right now we're happy to share the limelight," he adds.

Hard to argue with that: While Apple might sell 10-12 million phones this year, Microsoft's partners shipped 18 million in fiscal 2008, up two thirds from the year before, when they sold 11 million. That includes some 56 gadget manufacturers and 100 operators in more than 100 countries.

Similarly, while Apple has attracted a lot of attention for its red-hot app platform, which includes a few thousand widgets, Microsoft has had a developer program around for years: The company says its software developers kit for Windows Mobile 6 has been downloaded some 3 million times, and that some 18,000 consumer apps are available for Windows Mobile phones in the U.S...

iPhone Developer: I Just Made $250K From App Store In Two Months (AAPL)

Vasanth Sridharan 

Steve Demeter developed the iPhone puzzle game Trism as a side project, but now he's quitting his day job. Why? Because he says he's generated $250,000 in profits since he started selling the $4.99 game on iTunes this summer. That's after Apple (AAPL) has taken its 30% cut of total sales, and after subtracting his initial investment of about $5,000.

So while we've heard plenty of griping from developers who complain about Apple's restrictive grip on its store, you're certainly not going to hear Steve joining that chorus. In fact, he says, he's so pleased with Apple, that he's going to work exclusively with them, and will pass on the chance to work on other platforms, like Google's Android.

Why cut himself off from other markets? In part, because he's doing just fine with Apple. But Steve also says that Google's strategy of distributing its OS to multiple manufacturers who will create multiple handset models will actually cause him more headaches than its worth.

“Do I want to be spending 6 months to write the game, and another 6 months making it compatible? If I had Trism available for Android, and there are 50 Android devices and every time one of them crashes (the users) contact me, do I want that?”

So if he’s not expanding to the other mobile platforms, what is Steve going to do with his newfound wealth? He says he’s actively looking to hire more people – engineers and artists specifically. While he started off on his own, he now has four more people working for him in San Francisco, working on 5 more iPhone games.