We’ve heard the story a number of times: Android app developers are having too much trouble making a living with their wares, and many are turning to – or refocusing on – creating iPhone software. Apple’s App Store has long held an alluring, record-deal-in-the-sky-like promise for coders: If you create excellent software and the planets align just thusly, you might strike gold and retire as a result of a few hundred hours worth of work and a pinch of well-deserved luck. The investment of programming skills in Android, on the other hand, has generally dealt the far more common and realistic Hollywood hand of broken dreams, living in a rusty sedan, eating out of garbage cans, and wearing newspaper as clothing. But Eddie Kim, creator of the hugely successful Android app, Car Locator, has proven that Android dreams do come true, if only for a chosen few in these early stages of the Market’s lifetime.

Kim’s app does exactly what you think it does. That is, if you think that you notify the app when you park and it helps you find your car later. It’s simple, practical, and useful for virtually anyone that drives. Brilliant. Not only that, but Lindy Labs has a free Bluetooth plugin for the app that marks your location automagically when it’s disconnected from Bluetooth. So, you pair up with your car’s stereo, have the plugin activated in the settings, and it’s a done deal: Easy car location. But while the plugin is free, the app is not. What started as $1.99 side-project that Kim embarked on during vacation has become – with no promotion on Kim’s behalf – an incredibly popular app. Ridiculously popular. I can’t blame the guy for upping the price tag to $3.99. After placing third in the ADC2 and getting a featured spot in the Android Market, Kim’s little project has grown to such an extent that he’s now netting an average of $435 a day.

While it’s clear that Kim is on top of the Android app game, his app’s success is a result of not only his programming skills and ability to gauge the need for a particular functionality in a mobile program, but a series of tremendously fortunate events. Android doesn’t generally offer the pie-in-the-sky rewards for developers that iPhone is known for but things are looking up. As Kim says, ” I still think that Android is only a fraction of what it will eventually become.” And I’m willing to leave it at that.

Via ReadWriteWeb