[ios] iTunes Connect: How to choose a good SKU?

I'm reading the iTunes Connect Developer Guide as I'm trying to add a new application to iTunes Connect.

I'm a bit confused about the SKU number which I should provide. On page 81 in the above developer guide they provide an example of their data for their application Orange Ball.

They have chosen Orange_Ball_01 for the SKU Number. What is the 01 indicating - that it is version 1? Why use underscore? Why not just type “OrangeBall”, if that SKU is not used?

Update notes:

• on January 23rd 2012, Apple changed the above example to application "Ball Maze" and SKU "com.apple.com.maze".
• a few years later, Apple changed the whole documentation, but you may refer to https://help.apple.com/app-store-connect/#/dev97865727c for a similar example with application "Adventure App" and SKU "Adventure123".

SKU stands for Stock-keeping Unit. It's more for inventory tracking purpose.

The purpose of having an SKU is so that you can tie the app sales to whatever internal SKU number that your accounting is using.

As others have noted, "SKU" stands for stock keeping unit. Here's what I find currently (3 February 2017) in the Apple documentation regarding the "SKU Number:"

SKU Number

A unique ID for your app in the Apple system that is not seen by users. You can use letters, numbers, hyphens, periods, and underscores. The SKU can’t
start with a hyphen, period, or underscore. Use a value that is meaningful to your organization. Can’t be edited after saving the iTunes Connect record.

(internet archive link:) iTunes Connect Properties

The SKU example used in the documentation was to provide the allowed characters in a new user-specified SKU.

SKU can also refer to a unique identifier or code that refers to the particular stock keeping unit. These codes are not regulated or standardized. When a company receives items from a vendor, it has a choice of maintaining the vendor's SKU or creating its own.[2] This makes them distinct from Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), which are standard, global, tracking units. Universal Product Code (UPC), International Article Number (EAN), and Australian Product Number (APN) are special cases of GTINs.

Might be answer is late but look at Simple Information of SKU (Stock keeping unit) number is, it's an unique tracking number (an arbi­trary num­ber) that are used in appStore for your application. You can put what­ever you want in there as long as it is unique among your appli­ca­tions. Try to fol­low a pat­tern for the SKU Num­ber of your apps so that you will be able to bet­ter orga­nize them. I sug­gest a com­bi­na­tion of the cur­rent year + month + ID for your app. So if you’re devel­op­ing your first appli­ca­tion on september 1991 (oh,, yah it's my b'day's month and year :D ), you could put your SKU Num­ber as “19910901”. Here, I am just suggesting you for this pattern but you can take/choose any pattern which easy for you.

I put the year and the number series of my app example 2014-01

Spending some time coming up with an SKU naming strategy can help you. You’ll be able to make it easy for team members to read and understand what each SKU represents. Use a value that is meaningful to your organization.

Ultimately, your SKU is a way to record important product information, so the more straightforward it is, the better for everyone.

Sticking to alphanumeric SKUs and substituting “-” or “_” for space is always the safest and best bet.

E.g. Your app name: Social Point, Submit year: 2020 = Your SKU is: Social_Point_2020

You are able to choose one that you like, but it has to be unique.

Every time I have to enter the SKU I use the App identifier (e.g. de.mycompany.myappname) because this is already unique.