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Apple's App Store Tops 40 Billion Downloads; Generates $7 Billion For Developers
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."
or all downloads.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
2 Billion $ devided by 1000's of developers is not much income per dev. I'd rather see an average breakdown per dev or full breakdown.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
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.
Apple's last announcements on these figures were in September and October. In September, they quoted 700,000 total iOS apps, and in October they quoted 275,000 iPad apps. That's an average rate 641 total iOS apps per day, and 427 iPad specific apps per day. (Source: Apple)
The numbers on Android are a little hard to find. Does anyone have a figure for how many Android tablet apps are available?
It seems the Google Play store is growing faster, with 833 apps per day on average between September and October... but based on Google's previous announcements they seem to approve apps in fits and starts, with some periods approving thousands of apps per day, and other periods where the approval rate drops to 1/3 of that. (Source: Google)
On the Windows side, the Windows 8/RT store is growing at the same rate as the iPad app catalog, with an average 584 apps per day (before the Holidays). And the Windows Phone store is growing at about 300 apps per day over the past 6 months. I don't know how to combine these figures to compare to Android or iOS, since it's not clear how iOS counts apps for iPhone and iPad (is that 1 app or 2 apps) (Source: http://metrostore.preweb.sk/ and http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/)
Anyone else have other figures available?
Compare that 30% with the system in place by the phone companies. You were lucky if you got 30%.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
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 beleive.
Especially given how many people I know that spend a large amount of their free time downloading free apps, messing with them for 10 minutes, and then deleting them.
Hell, that's even how I approach mobile apps. 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.
I'd have thought that sort of thing would have been the largest portion of downloads. Alongside the big ones ... twitter, facebook, instagram, does groupon have an app (?), netflix, etc, etc... and that stuff is also all free.
I've got to believe that they are including in app purchases and so on to get up to those final totals.
Mmmmm, indeed. $7 billion worth of hurt.... Ouch.
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...
Apple doesn't make a significant amount of money off the app store. Having lots of software and games available sells hardware.
>Their awful awful policy makes it impossible to package and distribute any GPL code through their ecosystem. Das ist verboten.
Actually no. It's the GPL that makes that sort of problems (as always). Ask VLC that was released on the AppStore just to be sabotaged by one (1) pissed dev payed by Nokia. There are a number of GPL licensed apps on the AppStore. Apple has no problems with them as long as the devs agree to the AppStore terms.
Lesson to be learned : either use LGPL or better a BSD style license. (if any free software license is required). OR convince your own devs not to shoot themselves in the foot.
Let's see 40billion downloads generate $7billion for developers.
So each download puts about 17 cents into the pockets of a developer.
An excellent business model for Apple.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Near 0 –apple reject apps with "little or no utility".
The payment card industry negotiates rates based on many things, including what your card handling practices are, if your entire network and organization is PCI compliant, volume, average transaction size, etc.
For example, I work for a company that does about $100B in retail revenue annually. Our holy IT mantra is to not do anything that even remotely would run afoul of the PCI audit, because losing certified compliance would cause the transaction fees to go up, which is literally a billion dollar mistake.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
No, it's just not allowed to package GPLv3 apps. All app stores have this problem, at least the ones with DRM (Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, MAYBE Google Play, since DRM was introduced as part of Jelly Bean).
GPLv2 apps can be distributed just fine. GPLv2+ as well, as long as nothing makes it GPLv3+. (GPLv2 and v3/v3+ code CANNOT be combined - only v2+).
Heck, I'm not sure, but if a dev is classy enough, they could ship the source code into the IPA file too, so source code is right there with the binary.
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 charge 30%? you know what, they earned it.
Fishy? Not really. Your facts are just poorly aggregated.
For instance, you only accounted for iPhone sales, but Apple also sells the iPad, iPad mini, and iPod Touch, all of which are also iOS devices that can download and run these apps. Through March 2012 they had announced 365M iOS device sales, and by the end of the next quarter (i.e. the quarter when iPhone sales were winding down before the iPhone 5 and iPad mini rumors were rampant, thus slowing sales) they still managed to sell 35M units, bringing them to over 400M iOS devices by the end of June. So, already we can tell that you're off by 150M units at a minimum, and that still leaves the following six months of sales unaccounted for.
Going forward past June, Apple has since then released the iPhone 5, a new iPod Touch, the iPad mini, and the 4th gen iPad. Whether the mini is cannibalizing larger iPad sales or not will be revealed soon, since Apple is set to do their earnings announcement for the holiday quarter in about two weeks. Even if it is, however, its sales are estimated to be in the 8-10M range. Meanwhile, the iPhone 5 represented over 50% of smartphone sales as we got towards the end of the year, so it's safe to say that it's been selling well so far. Not to mention that iPad and iPod sales have traditionally picked up during the holiday season since they're not tied to contracts.
As such, 450-500M is a perfectly reasonable expectation for where they are today, given that it's six months since their last announced numbers and they've updated every single product line that's relevant right before the biggest sales time of the year.
And if we assume just 450M devices, then that would mean 40B/450M, which is around 89 apps on average, which is extremely reasonable, given that they're doubtless including all of those apps that people download, check out for five minutes, and then delete because they aren't what they're looking for. I did a quick sanity check, and I have 84 third-party apps currently installed on my smartphone, not to mention a few more on my tablet, and that doesn't include the dozens I've installed and deleted over the years. I wouldn't even classify myself as a heavy user; I actually think my usage is pretty close to typical for most users, since I don't use it as a geek tool or like a power user would.
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.
That's 1 paid download against 5 free downloads. The 5 free downloads were never expected to get any money from downloading.
If it weren't for ad revenue, this model wouldn't work at all. Might as well not even bother.
Have you considered telling Google their business model is flawed, and they might as well give up?
So, $7 billion made from 40 billion downloads equals $1 for every 5.7 downloads. Ouch indeed.
That downloads figure includes all the free apps as well.
If we divide that 7 Billion over the 5 Million registered developer accounts they have made in the entire time that the store has been running (5 years) they've made $1400 each. That's not even enough to pay for the 5x$99 fees and $1500 for the Mac needed to do development.
That would be pretty disingenuous given developer registration is free and that the app store currently has around 775,000 apps, your numbers make no sense. Even if you made the obviously false assumption that every app was paid or supported by iAds it still works out to an average of around $9000 per app.
I see you're a Linux fan. How much do Linux developers earn per download?
And that statement is downright deceitful considering you need to pay the $99 yearly license fee to get you application listed.
Wrong, it isn't deceitful at all, nowhere near 5 million people have listed applications, in fact there aren't even 20% of that number of applications in the app store today, yet you claim 5 million people have been paying $99 a year for the past 5 years, obviously a ridiculous and baseless claim that isn't in any way even close to being conceivably accurate.
You still need to pay for the Mac to develop on regardless of if you release anything.
Not if you already have one, and you certainly don't need one to become a registered developer. Moreover i doubt many people are buying a mac solely for the purpose of iOS development.
A free developer registration only gives you the right to look, not to touch (as in release an application).
Yes and the numbers speak for themselves, the vast majority have not released any application.
Credit card processors usually have a percentage fee plus a small per transaction fee. For example, PayPal (not my first choice, but they can be used for payment processing) takes 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction. They claim that you can get down to 2.2% with larger volume, but the 30cents is firm. If you are making transactions for $1 at a time, the 30 cents will eat you alive. At those rates the Apple cut is a good deal just for payment processing.
If you are selling a $5 app, that 30 cents just became a much smaller percentage of your costs. Payment processing would now be in the realm of 9%. The rest of the 21% Apple cut is probably fair for the distibution, servers, etc. Not too bad a deal.
please don't try to compare Angry Birds' development efforts for some of the major-motion-picture efforts of your typical FPS.
I didn't and I wouldn't. Angry Birds is a 99c game. "major-motion-picture efforts of your typical FPS" cost anything up to $60.
I'm saying that, compared to other 99c app developers, who may be making little money, Rovio put in the work. They deserve their success.
Not because it was particularly a "good" game. And certainly not because of massive development efforts.
Here's the similar Flash game I mentioned. People spent weeks playing Angry Birds. I doubt many would spend more than minutes playing this.
http://armorgames.com/play/3614/crush-the-castle
Angry Birds may not be to your taste, But judged by the amount of time people spent on it, and how many sequels people bought, it is indeed an excellent game. And you don't create an excellent game without putting the work in.
P.S. Are you a games developer?
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