Due to the work of Haklabs back in July of 2008 (when they successfully cracked Sega’s Super Monkeyball), cracked apps have been popping up everywhere from online file sharing sites, to sites that are designed for people to download cracked apps, and mainly, Appulo.us, by far the largest website which offers the ability to download thousands of cracked apps from your computer or from a native application on your iPhone/iPod Touch. We know that cracked apps have become incredibly popular but hardly any of us actually stop and think how it’s affecting the developers… in a big way. Apple doesn’t seem to care so much to these numbers however.
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The financial blog 24/7 Wall Street had a detailed post calculating the amount that Apple (AAPL) and developers of paid apps are losing when copies of their wares are downloaded to jailbroken, or unlocked, iPhones. On some pirate hubs, you can download nearly 1,000 iPhone apps in a single click. Their conclusion? For every paid app downloaded in the App Store, three are distributed for free through means that Apple hasn’t authorized. Why isn’t Apple protesting? For one thing, $140 million is less than 2 percent of the $7.8 billion revenue Apple is expected to see this fiscal year. 24/7 also notes that Apple didn’t make a huge fuss over music piracy either, given that it was making more revenue from iPods and iPhones, including those that were playing pirated songs.
This problem seems unlikely to cease unless Apple gets involved and if they don’t, the developers likely will. Other sources report that Apple has lost upwards of $140 million from pirated apps which is believably significant considering Apple has only made five times that off of the AppStore.
As for the losses that the developers are facing – it’s around $310 million.
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Developers Neptune Interactive Inc and Smells Like Donkey Inc have reported piracy rates has high as 90% for their game $1.99 Tap-Fu, and claim that it was available in a pirated version within 40 minutes of its release on the App Store.