The headline seems to make an assertion about $2B paid to developers.
However, it appears that the $2B number is an asymco estimate. It is not clear how they arrived at this estimate. Does anyone know how the they arrived at the $2B number ?
[edit: Thanks for the explanation, Trotsky. His post didn't mention any download numbers.
However, it looks like he discussed download numbers in a different post. Given those download numbers, his estimates make sense - of course, with all the caveats that you've outlined]
He took the June 2010 WWDC numbers of $1B to developers ($1.43B gross) and 5B downloads over the first two years of the app store to come up with $0.29 revenue per download over the lifetime of the app store. Then he applied that $0.29 per download to new download figures. This assumes that the percentage of free downloads or no cost upgrades has stayed static over the app store lifetime.
However, it appears that the $2B number is an asymco estimate. It is not clear how they arrived at this estimate. Does anyone know how the they arrived at the $2B number ?
[edit: Thanks for the explanation, Trotsky. His post didn't mention any download numbers.
However, it looks like he discussed download numbers in a different post. Given those download numbers, his estimates make sense - of course, with all the caveats that you've outlined]