One of the nice things about iPhone developers is many of them are very open in terms of discussing their successes and failures: something US outfit NimbleBit has underlined with a detailed breakdown of its 2009 operations.

Indeed, as well as general advice, such as -

"Our broadest goal isn't to cross our fingers for a top ten app, but to create NimbleFans. The NimbleFans are people who own multiple NimbleBit games, generally believe them to be worth more than $0.99, and most importantly, enjoy our games enough to show and tell others about them"

- it's also happy to drill down into hard numbers.

The two extremes of its 12 App Store releases are Scoops, which has generated $269,929 at a rate of $1,687 per hour of development, and Moon Drop, which has generated $9,489 at a rate of $59 per hour of development.

Head over to the NimbleBit website to read all about company's 2009, and find why it's running its own web link store into the App Store, as well as limiting its app development cycles to two man-months.