AppShopper

An otherwise unremarkable $0.99 app released today by iPhone developer Spielwerk has had a big win due to a mistake by Apple.

The app iGlowStickPro is a simple glow-stick entertainment app and really had little to distinguish itself from the hundreds of other apps released this week…. until a mistake on Apple’s part positioned it as the #1 selling paid app in their top 100 list. (See image on right).

These top 100 lists serve as a massive amount of advertising for developers who make that high, but iGlowStickPro’s positioning was simply an Apple glitch that was quickly corrected. The incorrect list was up for maybe 1-2 hours, but the impact has already been seen.

iGlowStickPro is now ranked #40 in all paid entertainment apps already. A huge rise for day #1 of sales. Other apps listed may have also seen sales boosts, but many of them were already ranked so the difference so far has been less dramatic.

The Top 100 lists seem back in order as of this writing.

With the introduction of in-app purchases or downloadable content (DLC), one question that remained for developers and other App Store followers was whether or not Apple’s top 100 grossing applications included these sales. I had a chance to speak with Bolt Creative’s Dave Castelnuovo in a Podcast the other day, and their Pocket God application recently included DLC. He was able to confirm that based on his sales numbers, the Top 100 Grossing definitely included these DLC purchases.

This was further confirmed by the appearance of Ngmoco’s Eliminate Pro in today’s Top 100 Grossing Games list. Eliminate Pro is unique in that it is one of the early apps to be released for Free and rely entirely on DLC for its income. It has done well enough on its launch, that it has started ranking in the grossing list:

Long term, this will be an interesting metric to follow to see how well a DLC-only game like Eliminate fares over time. While it may not reach as high a peak as a traditionally priced game, there’s a chance it will sustain a steady income for a longer period of time, if there’s a constant stream of DLC buyers.