I'm not willing to give out concrete numbers but, from my experience, that's absolutely the case. Our Mac App Store reveunes far eclipse our own store's revenues. I certainly wouldn't say maintaining and supporting our own store hasn't been worth it – we're able to offer deals and discounts to bulk and educational purchasers that we couldn't on the MAS, thus making us more appealing to those markets – but I'd give up selling on our own store before I ever considered giving up selling on the MAS.

Interesting. Are you willing to share a ballpark ratio of Mac App Store vs web storefront purchases?

I suspect the numbers for a typical app would look something like 5:1 or even higher.

For us, it's more in the 4:1 range, but I suspect you still might be right that many apps see a MAS:private sales ratio of 5+:1.

Because we're able to offer bulk and/or educational purchase discounts through our own store, we see a fair number of licenses move through that vector. Other apps might not appeal to bulk and educational markets as much.