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Apple's App Store Tops 40 Billion Downloads; Generates $7 Billion For Developers

Posted by samzenpus on from the more-money-more-apps dept.

An anonymous reader writes "With the eyes of the tech world fixed on CES this week, Apple this morning conveniently decided to issue a press release announcing that the iTunes App Store has now topped over 40 billion downloads. That's an incredible feat, to be sure, but even more incredible is that nearly half of those downloads occurred in 2012. In December alone, iOS users downloaded over 2 billion applications, setting a monthly record in the process."

5 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How many developers? by ernest.cunningham · · Score: 4, Insightful

    7 Billion dollars.....
    What you have to realise is that is just payout form Apple.

    Many developers (including myself) make a living developing custom applications for businesses. So that figure is just for those who sell their wares.

  2. Re:Doesn't pay much by Celarent+Darii · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Since Apple is paying for the infrastructure, it's actually quite good. You try paying for your own servers and bandwidth - you won't be making anything after 6 downloads.

  3. Re:And Apple's cut... by jopsen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bandwidth, etc. doesn't cost anything...
    But credit card transactions is a big expenditure here... Try finding a payment provider that takes less than 30% or 30 cent?
    Maybe you can get it cheaper if you are a big player like Apple, but when both Google, Amazon and Paypal are priced at 30% or 30 cent, I imagine that VISA and MASTER card prices are pretty much up there...

  4. Re:And Apple's cut... by paulpach · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I am a game developer, and I have my game in apple store, it is called Block Story.

    I have my app in the apple store and google play. There is nothing compelling me to use google play for example, I could sell the game from my own web site but I would be crazy to do this. I still voluntarily pay that 30% to have the app in google play and apple store.

    Why do I do it? well, you really can't dismiss all the work they do for you (both stores), consider:

    • * They market your app, putting them in "most recent" list, as well as in the "people who bought this also bought" list of other apps. This marketing alone is well worth the cost.
    • * They handle international payments. I don't have to worry about the dollar conversion, I get to focus in what I am good at: game development.
    • * I don't have to deal with PCI compliance, which I would have to do with my own store
    • * I don't have to deal with refunds, they take care of it.
    • * I don't have to deal with credit card processing. Huge nightmare
    • * I don't have to deal with bandwidth. When my free app is downloaded 300K times, this is an issue.
    • * I don't have to deal with updates. I publish my update, and they take care of notifying users, and installing the updates

    They charge 30%? you know what, they earned it.

  5. Re:And Apple's cut... by BasilBrush · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And suggests ~$10 billion in revenue; assuming $1 per download, that suggests 1 out of 4 downloads was paid. Even at $5 per download that suggests 1 in 20 downloads was paid. I find even that hard to believe.

    Apple's users don't mind paying for getting something with better quality. That's the major reason why, despite the larger numbers of Android phones, developers prefer the iOS platform.

    And yes, the figure will include in-app purchases. It's the "paid out to developers" figure, so is not just downloads.

    For example I bought my son a "toy guitar" for christmas; it pretty much needs constant tuning. so I went through 7 or 8 different free guitar tuning apps before finding one I liked.

    Sure, and there will be other people like you. And then there will be people who are not like you. People tend to overestimate the number of people that are similar to themselves.