Apple Says App Store Saw Record Revenue, Customer Transactions in July

[MacRumors]

July was a record-setting month for App Store revenue, according to Apple, seeing both record revenue numbers and a record number of customers making transactions. The company revealed the news to CNBC.

Apple's app store saw record-setting revenue numbers in July, the company told CNBC.

The Cupertino-based company also said that its app store saw a record number of customers making transactions.

During the company's recent financial results call covering the third fiscal quarter of 2014, Apple CEO Tim Cook noted that iTunes software and services were the fastest growing part of Apple's business during the quarter that ended in June. iTunes billings grew 25 percent year over year to an all time quarterly high, and Apple saw iTunes revenue of $4.5 billion, largely due to the continued success of the App Store.

As of June, Apple has had 75 billion cumulative App Store downloads, paying out a total of $20 billion to developers, with $5 billion paid in 2014 alone. According to app-tracking site AppShopper, there are 1,211,461 apps available in the App Store, including over 1 million iPhone apps and 610,000 iPad apps. Apple also has more than 21,000 Mac apps available in the Mac App Store.

Article Link: Apple Says App Store Saw Record Revenue, Customer Transactions in July

 

[maflynn]

Wow, 4.5 Billion for the qtr, mind boggling.

 

[MacsRgr8]

And to think that Apple didn't want the App Store in the first place....

 

[ghsDUDE]

Hopefully this gives AAPL a boost!

 

[uwdude]

Movie rentals

This couldn't have anything to do with most movie rentals going up to $5.99 now could it, hehe.

 

[Dulcimer]

And to think that Apple didn't want the App Store in the first place....

Steve Jobs didn't want it in the first place. There were other Apple employees that pushed for it though.

 

[mw360]

$5,000 per app per year? That's no way to make a living.

 

[Moonjumper]

$5,000 per app per year? That's no way to make a living.

Most of the money is focused on the apps that are charting. It is not a living for many.

 

[pedromcm.pm]

Android

Apple should monetize Android. Someone has to do it.

And to think that Apple didn't want the App Store in the first place....

Apple was always much more than Steve Jobs.

 

[0815]

This couldn't have anything to do with most movie rentals going up to $5.99 now could it, hehe.

Do you think people are now rather buying apps instead of renting movies and they spend even more for apps than they would have for movies ???

(according to the article, the increase largely due to the continued success of the App Store - so not movie rentals or music)

 

[rdlink]

$5,000 per app per year? That's no way to make a living.

Not sure exactly what you mean. If you mean that the developers are only making $5,000 per app per year, I think you need to go beyond averages, and look at this:

• Some developers are making far less than that, because people don't find value in their apps.
• Some developers are making a whole bunch more than that, because their apps are the ones selling on the store.
• Some developers make their money on advertising, which doesn't show up in Apple's numbers.

 

[firewood]

$5,000 per app per year? That's no way to make a living.

2/3rds of all apps are free apps, so that makes the mean average for non-free apps closer to $15k per year, above minimum wage for just 2 apps.

But the revenue distribution is extremely skewed (academic papers say something more like some sort of power law curve). So something like just the top 2% percent of all apps rakes in 90% or more of App store revenue. Which makes the median average really low, maybe a few cents per day for half of all the paid apps. There's a ton of junk, apps for tiny niches, and maybe a few poorly marketed undiscovered gems in the bottom half of the App store.

 

[mw360]

Not sure exactly what you mean. If you mean that the developers are only making $5,000 per app per year, I think you need to go beyond averages, and look at this:

• Some developers are making far less than that, because people don't find value in their apps.
• Some developers are making a whole bunch more than that, because their apps are the ones selling on the store.
• Some developers make their money on advertising, which doesn't show up in Apple's numbers.

I don't mean a whole bunch by it, but it's illuminating. Especially when you see some of the malicious or petulant garbage that app store 'reviewers' will write about $1 apps.

I think Apple are still keen to foster the illusion of a gold rush, but its long over. Just the way their search function can only show one app at a time. It's almost as if, like casinos, they're trying to promote a big winner do draw in thousands of losers.

 

[TouchMint.com]

This is a little scary for most indie devs.

As far as i can see over on iphonedevsdk forums most indies have seen a drop in revenue over the past few months. I think this just means there is a larger gap between the "big" companies and the indie teams. I remember reading something about how 5% of apps make 90% of the revenue on the app store I can only assume even less apps are making more of the money.

 

[firewood]

If you mean that the developers are only making $5,000 per app per year...

Note that a huge portion of full-time professional iOS developers are making in the neighborhood of 6 figure annual salaries or consulting fees working on enterprise mobile apps for corporate distribution outside the iTunes App store. Supporting that part of the developer ecosystem is some of what the Apple-IBM announcement was about. It's a separate big business in addition to the App store revenues, that helps drive iOS device sales.

 

[El Hikaru]

The revenue distribution reminds me the real world.

 

[firewood]

As far as i can see over on iphonedevsdk forums most indies have seen a drop in revenue over the past few months...

A lot of the ones seeing this drop were either doing zero marketing+PR of their own, and/or were doing apps too similar to the types of apps done by tons of new developers. Supply-and-demand, with the supply (competition from new developers) ever increasing.

 

[Mattsasa]

This is a little scary for most indie devs.

As far as i can see over on iphonedevsdk forums most indies have seen a drop in revenue over the past few months. I think this just means there is a larger gap between the "big" companies and the indie teams. I remember reading something about how 5% of apps make 90% of the revenue on the app store I can only assume even less apps are making more of the money.

I plan to release my first app to the app store with the release of iOS 8.

thanks for the discouragement

 

[chrisbru]

Think how much more that would be if Apple TV had an app store

 

[PocketSand11]

$5,000 per app per year? That's no way to make a living.

Either your app gets millions of downloads or hundreds, or about 10 if it's not free, and the free ones make only a few bucks in ad revenue for the developers unless they get millions of downloads. Really, $5,000 per year would be wonderful for many developers.

I'm making an app now for the experience and for the VERY slim and overly optimistic hope that it becomes big and/or gets bought out.

----------

I plan to release my first app to the app store with the release of iOS 8.

thanks for the discouragement

We're in this together, bro. I'm a team of one, and I don't even have a website. Now, I've already released on little cheapo app that got accepted by some miracle to the App Store. 803 downloads since March of 2014. Free and now with ads with the latest update. 50 people have updated, 27 ad impressions, 15 cents of revenue. I hope my second app (that I actually put effort into) will do better.

----------

Steve Jobs didn't want it in the first place. There were other Apple employees that pushed for it though.

Too bad the employees didn't push hard enough for the poor Xserve

 

[rhett7660]

Think how much more that would be if Apple TV had an app store

We can only hope.. someday soon! Hopefully sooner than later!

 

[winston1236]

We can only hope.. someday soon! Hopefully sooner than later!

For what?

 

[EricTheHalfBee]

I make a hell of a lot more than $5,000 per year on the Apps I've written. All of them are 100% free, with zero advertising.

Think about that for a second before doing some useless math like dividing revenue by the total number of Apps and concluding most developers don't make money.

 

[rdlink]

I don't mean a whole bunch by it, but it's illuminating. Especially when you see some of the malicious or petulant garbage that app store 'reviewers' will write about $1 apps.

I think Apple are still keen to foster the illusion of a gold rush, but its long over. Just the way their search function can only show one app at a time. It's almost as if, like casinos, they're trying to promote a big winner do draw in thousands of losers.

I agree that the "gold rush" factor is drying up. Fact is, with 1.2 million apps it's kind of hard to come up with many innovative ideas that haven't already been thought of. Maybe improving on interface, but not much real innovation opportunity left.

 

[rhett7660]

For what?

An app store for the AppleTV