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Yes, but the whole point is that this is a top selling app among many thousands, and it's only making $80,000. I would guess if you take the average selling app of its category, you would find that it's making much less than $40,000.

That said, unless this is a massively complex app (which I doubt), it really should take much less than a developer man-year. Plus, I'm guessing that this $80,000 is the net revenue, after they've paid their developers.

Still, it's not exactly inspiring for those of us starting to do mobile app development.

"net revenue" doesn't account for salaries. You're thinking of "net profit".

You're absolutely right. I tend to mix these two terms up, even though I recognize the difference between the two. Good thing I didn't go into finance.

Opportunity cost. If we're comparing it to annual income, we should compare to the annual income of the median mobile developer, which is less than $80k.

Look at it differently. Would you be impressed if the highest paid developer in Canada made 80k?