First Publicly Acquired iPhone App is Sold for $70,000

Today announced the official acquisition of “Where to“, an iPhone application which uses GPS to automatically discover nearby places of interest.

The story of the acquisition is an interesting and transparent one, and it’s with thanks to both parties involved that we’re able to learn many of the details first hand.

The application was originally developed by Sophia Teutschler and John Casasanta, co-founders of iPhone app development firm TapTapTap. On release, ‘Where To’ seems to be have been a glowing success, earning approximately $200,000 during its first three months of launch – at $2.99, that’s approximately 66,000 unit sales.

However, even with the success of the application, all has not been well behind the scenes. According to a post on the TapTapTap blog, the owners have run into disagreements regarding the future of the company. As such, both have decided to divide and sell the company’s assets, which of course included Where To, and go their separate ways.

On October 12th, the founders temporarily removed the Where To application from the App Store and approximately 12 days later, announced that the application was officially for sale. With impressive performance it wasn’t to be long before a prospective buyer appeared on the scene, and Ortwin Gentz arrived from Germany.

Gentz may be familiar to some of you for co-founding mac-software firm Equinux in 1999. He recently left the firm on sabbatical and, on acquisition of Where to, has launched his latest company FutureTap. Gentz has written a wonderful and transparent piece on the process of acquiring an iPhone app which I highly recommend you read.

Although not without risks, he has acquired an app with great potential and with the app co-creator Sophia Teutschler on board as part of the acquisition – we wish them the best of luck.