Apple has reported that App Store customers spent $300 million in purchases on New Year’s Day 2018 alone and $890 million in total over the week starting from Christmas Eve. The company has said that the spending was “record-breaking”. Apple has put some of the success down to the new redesign which graced the App Store with the iOS 11 update in September.
Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said:
“We are thrilled with the reaction to the new App Store and to see so many customers discovering and enjoying new apps and games. We want to thank all of the creative app developers who have made these great apps and helped to change people’s lives. In 2017 alone, iOS developers earned $26.5 billion - more than a 30 percent increase over 2016.”
Aside from new hardware sales which inevitably spurted sales, Apple also places some of the responsibility for the increased income on the new App Store saying that it made “app and game discovery fun and easy for the over half a billion customers that visit the App Store every week.” Some of the most popular apps included Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Monument Valley 2, King of Glory, Calm and Affinity Photo, Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga, Enlight Videoleap, 1Password, and Hulu.
In December, Pokémon Go went to the top of the App Store charts after receiving an update which included part of the game being built around Apple’s ARKit framework which provides a more detailed and realistic gameplay.
Since the inception of the App Store in July 2008, iOS developers have earned over $86 billion.
Source: Apple