“Apple’s app developers earned as much collectively as Hollywood did from US box offices in 2014,” Sophie Curtis reports for The Telegraph.
“Apple recently revealed that apps generated over $10 billion (£6.6bn) in revenue for developers in 2014, while Hollywood also took $10 billion in box office revenues, according to Box Office Mojo,” Curtis reports. “While Hollywood’s revenue stream is made up of more than just US box office takings, Horace Dediu, founder of analyst firm Asymco, pointed out that the app economy is also made up of more that Apple’s App Store billings. ‘The Apps economy includes Android and ads and service businesses and custom development. Including all revenues, apps are still likely to be bigger than Hollywood,’ he said.”
Curtis reports, “The app industry is also healthier than Hollywood, sustaining many more jobs (627,000 iOS jobs in the US versus 374,000 in Hollywood).”
Read more in the full article here.
Horace Dediu writes for Asymco, “The curious thing is that even though the medium of apps is swamping other forms of entertainment in all measurable ways, comprehension of the phenomenon is lagging.”
Read more, and check out the usual excellent charts, in the full article here.
Very cool that developing apps is open to all kinds of people, all over the world. Compare this with Hollywood, where you must drink the Kool-Aid if you want to play. Though Hollywood thinks that it is open-minded, Hollywood is really about conforming to Hollywood’s very narrow thinking. The app economy is a great thing! Refreshing.
Especially remarkable when you consider that the US motion picture industry is more than 100 years old, whereas the Apple App Store only opened in 2008. I wonder if the apples–to–apples comparison would be as close if one took into account a true figure of the film industry’s revenue losses to rampant online piracy, versus iOS apps which aren’t so widely stolen. It is also interesting to consider (despite the above article fairly focusing on a dollar gross comparison) that the distribution and theater model drains much more revenue away from the film studios than the more favorable arrangements between Apple and independent app developers. So Apple probably benefits way more as the owner of the playing field than anyone else does in the film industry.