Apple today announced that the App Store welcomed 2017 with its busiest single day ever on New Year’s Day, capping a record-breaking holiday season and a year of unprecedented developer earnings and breakout app hits. In 2016 alone, developers earned over $20 billion, up over 40 percent from 2015. Since the App Store launched in 2008, developers have earned over $60 billion, creating amazing app experiences for App Store customers across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV and Mac. Those efforts helped kick off 2017 with a remarkable start, making New Year’s Day the highest single day ever for the App Store with nearly $240 million in purchases.
“2016 was a record-shattering year for the App Store, generating $20 billion for developers, and 2017 is off to a great start with Jan. 1 as the single biggest day ever on the App Store,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, in a statement. “We want to thank our entire developer community for the many innovative apps they have created — which together with our products — help to truly enrich people’s lives.”
Customers broke all-time records this holiday season with purchases from the App Store topping $3 billion in December. In the same month, Nintendo’s Super Mario Run made history with more than 40 million downloads in just four days after its release, and was the most downloaded app globally on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
Super Mario Run is also among last year’s top 10 most downloaded apps worldwide, with Pokémon Go taking the top spot. Pokémon Go, a beloved game from Niantic, quickly became a cultural phenomenon in mid-2016. Prisma, Reigns, Procreate, Lumino City, Sweat With Kayla and djay Pro, from some of Apple’s independent developers, were among the most successful apps for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch and Mac, respectively. The App Store offers 2.2 million apps in total, up over 20 percent from last year.
With the App Store available in 155 countries, Apple’s customers have access to millions of apps to make their lives easier, enrich their passions and connect with people from all around the world. The App Store’s top-grossing markets include the US, China, Japan and the UK, with China experiencing record year-over-year growth at an incredible 90 percent. The global impact of the App Store was captured this past year with two campaigns — Apps for Earth and Games for (RED). In partnership with the World Wildlife Fund and (RED), customers were empowered to make a difference, helping to protect life on our planet and join the fight against AIDS. The custom content created by each campaign’s participating developers helped raise over $17 million in total for the two organizations.
With the introduction of iMessage apps and SiriKit in iOS 10, developers created exciting new types of app experiences. iPhone and iPad customers now have access to over 21,000 iMessage apps to send stickers and easily collaborate with friends, and for the first time ever, users can ask Siri to book rides, make payments, return a call and more.
Since subscriptions became available across all 25 app categories this fall, including Games and Kids, customers can subscribe to their favorite services from over 20,000 apps, with Netflix, HBO Now, Line, Tinder and MLB.com At Bat among last year’s most popular. iPhone and iPad customers grew the App Store’s subscription billings significantly in 2016, to $2.7 billion, up 74 percent from 2015.
Source: Apple Inc.
MacDailyNews Take: $3 billion in App Store purchases in December in December alone!
But none of those sales were to Professionals or Power Users. Therefore, Apple must totally suck. Discuss.
I was using sarcasm. Curious what troll responses would be. Sorry if I confused anyone. Go Apple!
I wasn’t confused, rather bemused but you need to use the /s tag for sarcasm. I should talk I often forget to use the /sshjtt (short story, humor, joke, tall tale).
For trolls use only official authorized bait.
Oh no. Eddie’s (Cue) out shopping for another Lamborghini thinking all’s good at Apple and a reward is due.
Nah, Apple knows what it is doing. Their market is for iPhone, iPad, and watch. Read iOS. And the App Store. Apple no longer cares about OSX or desktops and laptops. The latest MBP laptops were done just to appease the naysayers for a short while. This is the future path for Apple.
In your misguided option, unless you are Tim Cook in disguise which is extremely doubtful.
you mean ‘misguided opinion’ right? Well, that is your ‘opinion’, I just look at the state of Apple right now as it pertains to desktops, and all I ever hear is “We’ve got great things in the pipeline” but where is all this great stuff (MAC PRO, Mini, etc)? Certainly not in the users hands. Just keep waiting and hoping, and maybe one day it might happen. I’ve already moved on to the cutting edge, and it isn’t Apple.
Unfortunately, I fear you are correct, at least at this moment in time.
The problem with your scenario is the long view. Apple needs Macs in developers’ hands in order to write the best apps for those iOS devices. Yes, you can write iOS apps on Windows or Linux machines. I’ve seen it done. But Apple needs to keep the best app development going using Apple’s tools so Apple can keep the iOS improvements happening faster and in a more stable fashion than the Android world.
That will only happen if Apple can keep development on Apple devices — and at least for the foreseeable future that means Macs. And, new developers are not going to like some of the trends in the new “Pro” machines.
If Apple abandons the Mac lines (either directly or indirectly through stagnation) then the long term outlook for iOS apps is not a pretty picture.
iOS app development will swiftly move to iOS devices (pun intended) and then Apple will see no reason to continue the Macintosh. (God please please let me be wrong.)
Are there any development environments on iOS that allow you to develop complete Apps you can submit to the App store similar to what Android has available for it currently?
If iOS development becomes OSX’s primary purpose at the expense of non-software development professionals, I don’t see huge leaps in keeping up with the competition for the desktop in any form in the future. Also not a pretty picture.
Apple may well know what it’s doing, however that does not necessarily equate to it being the correct thing to do. Yes iPhone is Apple’s cash cow and the app store is a real money spinner as a consequence. Trouble is most people still need to use desktops/laptops and that won’t change for at least 10 years. So when Apple seems to have a lack of focus on the hardware it’s creating for the Mac then they will get criticised. I want to upgrade my 4 2011 Macs, but here is my dilemma, the only software I’m prepared to use is MacOS because it’s still the best out there, but if I want affordable state of the art hardware it doesn’t run MacOS, it only works with Windoze, so I sit here in a perpetual stand off. I will run my 4 Macs into the ground until Apple launches something at the cutting edge that gets me drooling that isn’t a complete rip off. Just because Apple doesn’t need to put 100% focus into the Mac anymore doesn’t make it right and it’s really sad to see. I hope Apple gets it’s edge back, I really do.
I agree with your assessment. Wait and Hope, That is the new silent Apple mantra. Well, good luck with that, but wait and hope isn’t for me. I’ve moved on to the cutting edge.
I tend to agree. My two kids love their iPads and their parents’ iPhones. My iMac barely raises any interest.
And when we walk into an Apple Store, my girls run off to the iPad Pros to use the pencil. And when I look around the store you can see the differences in generations – kids with iPads, young adults with MacBooks, middle aged asking for machines with grunt and oldies doing classes on iPads so they can learn how to see pics of their grandkids.
The future doesn’t belong to me but my kids. Apple is moving right along with them.
Whaaaaat? I thought Apple was dead under the Cook?
When Pros wonder why Apple doesn’t focus on them anymore, this is why. The bucket of money they could make from every Pro that would by an updated Mac Pro is dwarfed by money made pretty much everywhere else in the Apple ecosystem.
Every device Apple spends money to make and sell that does not then drive profits in services is not money well spent. That $300 iOS device could over years turn in services profits many times that. That $5,000 Pro device, while a nice one time sale, may not yield many services dollars at all.
It’s just another case of the bean counters taking over at Apple.
It’s all about making money off of other people’s work. A true bean counter mentality.
Who gives a damn about making the very best products in house for their customers? Not the bean counters at Apple.
It’s all about how can we make the most money THIS QUARTER off of the minimum amount of internal money and effort.
During the last year did we hear hard numbers about any Apple hardware sales of internally developed Apple products (other than the very high level numbers in the quarterly reports)? No. They stopped that, because it is not as much of a bean counter “WOW Factor” as things like this announcement.
Back at the beginning of the Dark Days Apple was overly focused on doing things in house and losing focus on being the best. It was not about developer inclusiveness. Old timers can remember the outrageous costs of the full Apple development environments and tools. But, Apple at least attempted to make the internally developed hardware and software the best they could.
Today it’s just the opposite. The development environments and tools are priced very reasonably. Lots of developers are using them. (Having Lots and Lots of developers is what kept Microsoft afloat through the Ballmer days.) But, Apple seems to have lost its way with regard to internally developed hardware and software (with the *possible* exception of the iPhone and Apple Watch). Without interesting hardware and OSes eventually developers migrate to other platforms no matter how good or cheap the developer tools are.
Developers will only support you for so long. Yes, you get the biggest return for your investment in the short term by getting lots and lots and lots of developers to write for your hardware, but that is very short sighted if you don’t keep the hardware and OSes on the cutting edge too!
They are making the very best iOS devices for their customers. Since they sell FAR more of those than desktops or laptops, that _should_ be their focus.
“Without interesting hardware and OSes eventually developers migrate to other platforms”
Developers that want to make money or developers that develop for fun? Because You can TRY to pull a profit from a non-iOS app because the other hardware and OS’s are cooler, but cooler rarely pays the bills. As long as Apple is selling a TON of devices to people with disposable income and then means by which to spend it, there will be developers on the platform. A 3 year old MacBook can compile an iOS game just as well as the latest one… no cutting edges needed here.
“Developers will only support you for so long.”
Yes, they will support you until they’re no longer making money selling apps for your platform. That has VERY little to do with any edges and how they may be cut.
When someone brings up “iOS pays more to developers”, I want to ask “and how broad is that developer base that actually gets paid or makes a profit vs other OSes”. I suspect that like any other profession a small top percentage actually makes the lion’s share.
Well Apple could DO IT.
Acer today shows the “Predator” laptop at $9000.
Pros in any industry want performance and generally that will pay for the laptop, but Apple has to DELIVER.
The pros who pay $9000 (I’ve priced the Dell workstation laptops at $7500 plus tax for CAD work) want to justify their $s with increased speed and less finger drumming, and those who do it know what I mean.
From what I observe, Apple’s success comes from having a small range of processors at any time keeping UX relatively uniform whether it be macOS or iOS. If Apple should create a cutting edge laptop it would probably also mean that they would be pushed to update their entire line to maintain their uniformity. Not a bad idea, but it may also push prices for Apple devices way beyond what many can afford.