Steve Jobs: iPhone dev revenues â??just hit $1bnâ??

Apple CEO Steve Jobs today revealed that the iPhone app market has since its birth grossed $1.43 billion in revenues worldwide.

And, since Apple takes a thirty per cent cut on all App Store item sales, Jobs stated that the thousands of iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad developers have together made $1 billion in sales.

Speaking at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco today, Jobs told attendees that the App Store “crossed 5 billion downloads” as recently as last week.

Both statistics arriving at the same time offers an interesting, though somewhat rudimentary, calculation: Based on Apple’s stats, each download on the App Store – including the ones that are free – represent revenues of 20c each to developers.

That figure is no doubt intoxicated from the reams of free content available on the App Store, yet it puts a contrasting perspective to what Jobs said on stage in San Francisco today:

“This next thing is my favourite stat of the whole show,” he said in front of a gigantic screen, resplendent with, presumably, PowerPoint slides.

“You know we give 70 per cent of revenue to developers. So how much have we paid? To date? Just a few days ago we crossed $1b.”