Seems like Christmas is the time for app developers to step up their PR efforts. This is great, as we find out a lot about how 2009 went for them and what their outlook on 2010 is. Today we read about Shazam and Tapulous, two of the most successful mobile product companies.

Tapulous broke the news that their revenues per month are reaching 1 million US dollars and that they are already profitable. This is an example of a very successful app company, which claims that they (we) are only at the beginning of making money mobile. They see a huge wave of mobile commerce coming and they want to profit from it just like Zynga or Playfish did online. So far the company is earning money through advertising and selling music through its apps. Once users in general become more accustomed to buying virtual goods with their mobile phones, 600 million plays of Tapulous-songs up to today already seem like a great basis for future revenues. Quote Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous: “It’s going to be big and all of a sudden people are going to say, ‘holy cow, where did those guys come from?’”

The second example, Shazam, tells the world that it’s aiming for 100 million users in 2010. It is astounding and impressive to see the user growth the nine year old company has seen since the launch of the Apple App Store. Since then the company has nearly doubled its user base to 50 million, adding 500,000 uses a day as of lately. Moreover, the so far free service seems to have worked out a well working monetization strategy: freemium. They did not give out sales numbers, but as far as the premium app’s (Shazam Encore) ranking on the App Store goes, it seems to be working.

It is great to see more and more examples of app developers that develop an individual strategy for making money with a consistently growing user base while providing value. We are hoping to see a lot more of this in 2010.