The notion that the App Store is the only marketplace that can deliver serious profits to developers is beginning to be eradicated, the maker of Android app Car Locator revealing that he now rakes in $13,000 a month.

Developer Edward Kim made the revelation in a blog post, unsurprisingly titled "An Android Success Story". According to Kim, early sales of Car Locator brought in $20 a day, but the app's rise to prominance began when it won second place in the Android Developer Challenge 2.

"The application was netting an average of about $80-$100/day, until it became a featured app on the Marketplace. Since then, sales have been phenomenal, netting an average of $435/day, with a one day record of $772 on Valentine's Day," Kim claims.

"Some may be quick to point out that a featured Android application is only able to net $400/day, while top iPhone apps make thousands.

"But the Android market appears to rotate applications in and out of the featured apps list in some pseudo-random fashion. Every time I open the Marketplace app, the featured list is different and most of the time, I don’t even see my app on there."

Simple success

The free version of Car Locator has been downloaded 70,000 times according to Kim's own stats. The full $3.99 release - which, Kim notes, didn't suffer when its price was raised from $1.99 - has notched up 6,950 downloads.

What's even more encouraging for Android developers is that all this has been achieved without Car Locator topping the charts.

According to Kim, it briefly reached #4 in the Travel category for paid apps, but the majority of the game's revenue seems to have been generated from steady sales rather than a quick blast to the top of the pile before falling back down again.

Kim's eye-opening stats come just days after Glu CEO Niccolo de Masi suggested that Android Market struggles when compared to the App Store. He suggested the platform's lack of maturity makes it hard for studios to make significant money from their releases.

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