On the basis of the number of applications sold via Apple’s 2008-launched iPhone App Store, a 24/7 Wall St. report has deduced that software piracy has, thus far, resulted in a nearly $450 million sales loss for Apple as well as iPhone application developers.

While a part of the likely loss figures are based on the App Store sales estimates and the number of already-shipped iPhones, some data is also based on the codes that developers place in their apps to report back from pirated copies.

However, though the $450 million piracy-resultant loss figure was reached after a long succession of estimates and postulations, the 24/7 report does not take into account the fact that most of the people that pirate applications do not pay for them no matter what the apps cost.

As per the report, once iPhone and iPod touch applications are “jailbroken” – that is, hacked to allow the installation of applications that have not been approved by Apple and are thus not available at the App Store -, hackers can locate the available App Store apps with the built-in copy protection stripped out.

Citing examples of that piracy rates among apps can be as high as 90 percent, the report said that nearly 95 percent of the copies of Fish Labs’ Rally Master Pro 3D are apparently pirated; and almost 75 percent of the copies of the iPhone art creation app Layers are pirated.