Realmac says Clear got 350K downloads in 9 days, talks iPad and Mac versions

Clear, the clever iPhone app we reviewed last week, has sold 350k copies in just the 9 days after its release, reports The Guardian. The publication got some quotes from Nik Fletcher, the product Manager of Realmac about the app’s success and its future plans.

Press coverage, including ours and other Apple blogs, likely contributed to the success of the app. Being featured as Apple’s App of the Week and a link to the app being Tweeted out by the AppStore Twitter account likely didn’t hurt either.

“We questioned the need for every single piece,” says Fletcher. “Everything in the app had to justify its position.”

Still, the fact that it is a unique and focused app that wasn’t afraid to charge customers for quality should be encouraging to those looking to do something outside of the ordinary. I had chatted with Ryu briefly before the launch of the app about their planned pricing and fremium was very much on the table at that time.

“We felt that 69p was a really reasonable price for people to experiment with it,” says Fletcher. “At some points in development we did look at going down the freemium path, but there’s an honesty in making an app and being willing to say to people that you think this is worth money. The old-fashioned way!”

Fletcher also acknowledges that they would like to use the data in the Clear app on other platforms like the Mac and iPad and said that they are far more likely to bring it to those platforms, rather than ones outside the Apple ecosystem.

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Clear is the first app from fresh development studio Impending, founded by tap tap tap partner Phill Ryu and David Lanham of the Iconfactory, in partnership with Milen Dzhumerov, and the hugely talented folks at Realmac Software, who made the lovely Analog.

For more about Clear, check out our review with Impending’s Phil Ryu here.