Co-founder Mills wants the mobile games industry to learn the lessons in ustwo's App Store adventures.
UK studio ustwo makes most of its money from working on mobile and design projects for big brands, but the last two years has seen the company diversify into own-IP apps, mainly for iPhone. "Niche doesn't sell, but niche is what it's all about," he said, by way of an introduction to the company's philosophy.
The company's main commercial success on iPhone is MouthOff, a cartoon app with mouths that can be held in front of your face for comic effect. It's been all over the media, which Mills says helped ustwo understand that "the marketing behind apps is absolutely crucial... we started not only should we start investing in design and development, but also investing in how to sell."
The company has worked with Turner and Cartoon Network to make a branded version of MouthOff, as well as a separate version for virtual world Moshi Monsters, and charity Kids Company. Meanwhile, the original app has spawned a whole subculture of YouTube videos from users, showing how they're having fun with it.
On iOS, the app has made £123,456, while its 6,673 Android Market downloads have mysteriously been swelled by 66,794 downloads of the Android app from other sources (i.e. piracy).
Mills also talked about ustwo's PositionApp application, which crunches App Store charts from around the world and lets users check the historical position of any app or game.
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He also talked about a music app called Inkstrumental, which cost around £80,000 to develop, and "utterly bombed" in terms of sales, even though Apple promoted the app. "In total it made £8,108," he said, referring to its first month on the App Store. Eventually it went free.
The talk ran through a series of ustwo apps, moving on to Happy Snapper next. This was an iPhone app based around manipulating photos by placing virtual stickers on them, with funny slogans. However, he says ustwo's big mistake was to set the app's go-live date as 'Automatic', meaning it went live on the App Store one morning, when the company wasn't quite ready for the big PR push. Another learning: users didn't use its sharing features to publish pics on Twitter anywhere near ustwo's expectations.
Next up: Granimator. An iPad wallpaper creator app that launched alongside Apple's tablet, with graphics packs created by famous design studios around the world - which users could buy in-app. Recently, it spawned a separate iPhone app called Grallery, which showcases the best wallpapers made in Granimator for people to download.
"It got us a lot of press within the design world, but it is still a niche. Most people don't want to create wallpapers, they just want to get wallpapers."
ustwo is also moving more into games, initially with its 'dot' series (represented by a full stop). The original game was created in 48 hours, and required 5,750 sales to break even. "It didn't cover our costs sadly," said Mills. Not least because calling the game '.' meant nobody could find it on the App Store without a direct link. It sold 3,591 downloads, and has since racked up more than 16,000 free downloads.
Dot Two sold 2,948 copies, and then generated more than 60,000 free downloads. The third game - 'dotdotdot' - was promoted by Apple, and was according to Mills the best of the lot. It sold 7,829 copies on iPhone, and 297 [sic] on Android. "Overall, we've made our money back, and we've got three awesome games."
Mills also showed the effects of distributing a game for free on Free Game Of The Day, which saw a dot game rise from two daily sales to 77,520 free downloads one day, 114,796 the next, but then on switching back to paid saw sales drop to 33,663 and then 67 copies on the fifth day.
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