If you want a prime example of a successful games company that's been enabled by Apple's App Store, top of my list would be US outfit Backflip Studios.

Not often highlighted by the press as many of its games are free and ad-funded, albeit with the option for paid for upgrades, nevertheless, it continues to rack up millions of downloads for each release. And it continues to release a lot of games.

Feed the demand

Its most recent was NinJump, which has been downloaded more than four million times within a month of launch.

This follows on from Strike Knight, which also did four million downloads over a three month period.

Indeed, the company's historic download total is now almost 50 million, half which have come from early release Paper Toss.

In comparison, Tapulous, which has had over 35 million downloads of its Tap Tap Revenge games - albeit using a different in-app purchase business model - was purchased by Disney in June for an estimated $35 million.

Daily bread

Yet where Backflip really scores high is its daily user numbers - something all online game companies focus on as it's this rather than pure downloads that provides the ability to generate cash - whether by ads or IAPs.

Currently, across all its releases, there are over two million uniques users playing Backflip's games daily.

And given that analytics company Flurry reckons the average revenue generated per user for such games is around $1.22 per user per month - although not a strictly apples to apples comparison as this number was for IAP not ads - it's still looking like a very, very good business.