Holiday Gift Guide »

Android developers can make money too; Car Locator makes $13,000/month

Categories: Android, Applications
By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 1:53 AM

Developer success stories are dangerous. Someone hears something about some application making a one man development shop a lot of money and suddenly there are conferences dedicated to creating mobile applications, universities creating courses to develop mobile applications, and analysts projecting that applications will become a multi billion dollar industry in a few short years.

Apple’s iPhone had a few success stories, like iFart and Trism, but today the majority of money being made is by big game publishers such as EA and Gameloft. What about Android?

Well we finally have a success story, and that’s “Car Locator”. It’s a beautiful front end to solve the “Dude, where’s my car?” problem many forgetful people experience. There’s a free version, but also a paid version that has been downloaded a little over 6,500 times yielding Edward Kim $13,000/month. He’s hopeful he can make more, and he even doubled the price of his application without greatly impacting sales.

We wish him the best of luck, but I can’t emphasize this enough, stories like this are rare. If you’re thinking that you can make an application and suddenly start making thousands of dollars a month, then you’re insane.

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • Rick

    Actually I expect to see a lot more. There are a lot of functions people have been wanting for years but the cell phone providers were too greedy to milk what they could of the low quality services they have. There are a lot of functions I would be happy to pay for, but I can only get in japan, or in tiny war torn israel of all places. Its reasons like this that made Android so popular, and it’s still too far locked down.

    Folks. There is money to be made and a lot of it.

  • Sarah Mullen

    We’ve just launched a service that helps Android developers monetize apps, thought it might be useful – http://www.metaflow.com/news/2010/07/06/metaflow-…

  • sarahlmullen

    We’ve just launched a service that helps Android developers monetize apps, thought it might be useful – http://www.metaflow.com/news/2010/07/06/metaflow-…

  • http://twitter.com/chadbag chadbag

    I hope the guy keeps making money. It can only help him and the Android platform. (Said as an iOS developer).