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Although it took the App Store only nine months to hit its 1 billionth app download, the store itself is apparently not much of a moneymaker for Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL).
At best, the company made about US$45 million from all those downloads, according to calculations by Jeremy Liew of venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Even though about 77 percent of the 43,000 apps in the store have a price tag, most people download the free ones.
That probably doesn't bother Apple, though, as the company likely views the App Store primarily as a lure to get people to buy its iPhones and its pricey iPod touch devices.
1 Billion but So What?
Consumers love the Apple App Store enough that they collectively downloaded over 1 billion applications by April -- a mere nine months after the store was launched.
However, they are mainly going for the free apps, according to Liew.
His calculations reveal that the ratio of paid to free app downloads ranges from 1:15 to 1:40. That would work out to paid apps constituting between 25 million and 66 million downloads.
How Much Is That App in the Window?
The mean price of an app on the top paid apps list is about $2.65, according to Ben Lorica in the O'Reilly Radar blog.
Multiplying that by Liew's figures, it would seem that Apple generated between $66 million and about $177 million from the App Store.
Since Apple gets only 30 percent of an app's selling price, with the remainder going to the app's developer, that means it made between $22 million and $53 million from the App Store.
It's Not All About Money
Based on that calculation, earnings from the App Store would constitute chump change compared to Apple's revenue from iPhone sales 
. In the second quarter of its fiscal year, Apple sold 3.79 million iPhones. Together with Apple TV, the devices accounted for almost $5.5 billion in deferred revenue.
Apple lumps iPhone and Apple TV sales together in its earnings reports. These devices generate revenue over time -- the iPhone through its wireless subscription plan -- which is calculated as deferred revenue under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Apple prefers analysts look at non-GAAP figures, which it says more accurately reflect its earnings.
However, Apple has not included revenue from the store in its earnings reports.
Apple likely opened the App Store as a way to enhance the value proposition of iPhones and iPods rather than to score windfall profits directly from app sales.
"The App Store may become an important source of income, but it's more like gravy on top of what Apple's making from the iPhone," Julien Blin, principal analyst and CEO of JBB Research, told MacNewsWorld.
Just Like the iPod
"The most important thing to Apple is that the App Store is driving iPhone sales," Lightspeed Venture's Liew told MacNewsWorld. "It's the same strategy as it has with iTunes, where, at 99 cents a song, most of the money goes to the labels."
The App Store enabled Apple to break into the highly competitive smartphone market and carve out a niche for itself very rapidly, Liew said.
"The 40,000 or so apps in the store are all incremental features and functionality that would not otherwise be available to iPhone users, and that makes buying the iPhone more compelling," Liew added.
That could explain Apple's low-key stance on the disputes that have erupted recently over apps being allowed or banned in the App Store.
"Apple doesn't care what people think of the apps," Liew explained.
Distribution of Apps
There are now nearly 43,000 apps in the App Store, and the majority of them in the U.S. iTunes App Store cost money, Ben Lorica, senior researcher at O'Reilly Radar, told MacNewsWorld.
Games constitute the largest category, and 13 of the top 20 all-time apps for sale are games, according to Lorica.
The comScore Apple App Store Report shows that three of the top five apps installed in February were games -- "Tap Tap Revenge," "Touch Hockey FS5" and the venerable "Pac-Man."
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