Edible Apple

In case you haven’t noticed, Apple’s suite of productivity apps (Pages, Keynote, and Numbers) have consistently maintained a spot on Apple’s top list of 10 most downloaded iPad apps. Moreover, the 3 apps have consistently occupied the top 3 slots on the Top Grossing list for iPad apps. In short, the million-plus iPad owners out there love themselves some iWork.

As it turns out, Apple may very well be the most successful iPad developer yet. BusinessInsider did some rudimentary analyses on Apple’s successful reign atop the iTunes App Store and deduced that Apple may rake in over $40 million in annual iWork sales alone. Now $40 million in the grand scheme of Apple’s financial statements is a drop in the bucket, but it’s still nothing to sneeze at.

Here’s how they arrived at the estimate.

BusinessInsider talked to a few top-10 app developers and found that a top iPad app on the weekend is likely to net about 7,500 downloads. Meanwhile, a top ranked iPad app during the week nets about 2,500 downloads a day. And seeing as how each and every iWork app has been in the top 10 since the iPad was released, going back and doing a little bit of math is pretty straight forward.

7,500 downloads x 2 (for Saturday and Sunday) + 2,500 downloads x 5 (Mon-Fri) = approximately 27,500 downloads a week for Apple, a figure which nets Apple an estimated $825,000 a week. Over the course of a year, that’s about $43 million. Not too shabby.

To be fair, the report acknowledges that the calculations are anything but authoritative, especially given that the iPad has only been available for a little over a month.

This obviously includes some significant assumptions: That the rate of iPad purchases and iWork app purchases remain the same. And this doesn’t take seasonality, international expansion, international pricing, exchange rates, price adjustments, or competition from other office apps/sites into account.

Still the immediate success of Apple’s suite of iWork apps indicates that there is a strong demand for serious productivity apps on the iPad. Microsoft and Google might wanna take note, though given that they’re busy working on their own respective tablet devices, don’t expect them to join the iPad party anytime soon.