By: Nick Gambino
Apple had reason to celebrate as they rang in the new year. The tech giant’s App Store brought in $3 billion in revenue in the last month of 2016 alone.
Phil Schiller, Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing at Apple, told The Verge that this figure is made up of in-app purchases, paid downloads and subscription fees. This is due in large part to the fact that there are over 2.2 million apps available on the store allowing it to become the go-to spot for anything mobile.
This is not just a win for Apple but also developers. In 2016 Apple paid out a whopping $20 billion to those that make the apps possible. That’s a spike of 40% compared to 2015. These kind of figures are only going to attract more and more who want to make apps and get a slice of the pie for themselves.
While there’s no doubt that the App Store was bound to have a good year, it didn’t hurt that Pokémon Go took off like a wildfire becoming the most downloaded app of the year and turning half the population into imaginary monster-catching children. (I tried really hard to not sound condescending there and I fear I’ve failed miserably.)
Now in case you think all of this was just due to a flurry of activity during the holidays with November taking the trophy for highest month ever only to be beaten by December the following month, January is already off to a wicked start with $240 million pulled into the App store on January 1st.
With the recent release of Super Mario Run and subscription fees and subscriber incentives adding to the pot I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple cemented another highest ever year for 2017.
Do you think the App Store will continue its hot streak? Why or why not? Sound off in the comments below!
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