New Year’s Day 2017 was the single biggest day on the App Store. It was reported that the sales on that day reached almost $240 million on apps. As well, December 2016 was the biggest month of sales in the history of Apple’s App Store, which was launched in 2008.

The company registered $3 billion on sales in the App Store during the last month. According to Phil Schiller, the company’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, this was thanks to a combination of in-app purchases, paid downloads and fees for subscriptions.

The company registered $3 billion on sales in the App Store during the last month. Photo credit: Brosix
The company registered $3 billion on sales in the App Store during the last month. Photo credit: Brosix

Apple made around $8.5 billion from the App Store last year

2016 is over, so it’s time for companies to look back and calculate how it all turned out for them last year. Apple is not that open when it comes to sharing all its stats. However, maybe its willingness to share it this times can be linked to the changes that were announced a few months ago. A Part of these changes includes: opening up subscriptions to all twenty-five categories of app makers – not only games or video apps – and that it would offer better revenue sharing deals for app makers who were capable of keeping subscribers for an extraordinary amount of time. Apple also made an incursion into search ads in the App Store.

It was announced that December was the bestselling month of the App Store, not just in 2016, but since 2008 when the App Store was introduced. Schiller said that they made $3 billion in sales just last December. At the moment they have reached 2.2 million apps. App makers were paid out $20 billion in 2016, which is 40 percent more than last year’s payment. Since 2008, app makers have received $60 billion from Apple, which means that they received a third of it only thanks to 2016.

If Apples gets 30 percent of the app sales, it would perceive about $8.57 billion in revenues. App subscriptions made up $2.7 billion of that amount, which Apple says is a double-digit increase.

As well it was announced that the best-selling day was New Year’s Day. iOS users spent about $240 millions on apps that day.

Pokemon Go was the most downloaded app of 2016

Though it is not so shocking, it was announced that Pokemon Go was the most downloaded app of 2016. As well, it was the fifth highest-grossing app in Apple’s App store. Most of the $3 billion sales achieved last month came from games.

Schiller announced that the United States continue to be the largest market for the Apps Store. Japan and the U.K are among the top grossing markets as well. However, there are other countries where sales have rapidly increased. The Chinese market is becoming paramount for Apple, revenues in China grew 90 percent last year. Curiously, just yesterday Apple decided to remove The New York Times’ English language and Chinese language apps from the App Store available in China, after the government of that country requested it. No comments have been made about this removal.

Source: The Verge