App Store Hits $10 Billion In 2013
Yesterday, Apple announced that 2013 was a very good year for the company’s own App Store as total sales topped $10 billion last year. Last month alone saw sales totaling more than $1 billion in the App Store, a record breaking figure for December (and any other month for that matter) making it the most successful month in the company’s history. In December 2013 App Store users downloaded three billion apps, which is another record number. Overall, iOS and OS X developers have earned $15 billion in the App Store.
Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, Eddy Cue, said: “We’d like to thank our customers for making 2013 the best year ever for the App Store [ …] The lineup of apps for the holiday season was astonishing and we look forward to seeing what developers create in 2014”. In the press release, Eddy Cue said the 2013 lineup was ‘astonishing’ and says some of last year’s biggest successes are Candy Crush Saga, Puzzles & Dragons; the company also congratulates developers that were quick to adopt the seventh iteration of iOS, launched in September last year, but also big developers that saw success on its platform: “2013 saw surprise hits like Ellen DeGeneres’ Heads Up, ProtoGeo’s Moves, Simon Filip’s Afterlight and Kevin Ng’s Impossible Road. Many of the year’s biggest successes like Candy Crush Saga, Puzzles & Dragons, Minecraft, QuizUp and Clumsy Ninja were created by international developers, while Duolingo (United States), Simogo (Sweden), Frogmind (UK), Plain Vanilla Corp (Iceland), Atypical Games (Romania), Lemonista (China), BASE (Japan) and Savage Interactive (Australia) emerged as developers to watch in 2014“.
One year ago, Apple said that its App Store managed to top 40 billion downloads with 20 billion downloads coming in 2012. In December 2012 App Store users downloaded more than two billion apps, 1 billion less than the amount downloaded in December 2013; Apple also mentioned there were 500 million user accounts registered in December 2012. In May last year, Apple said its App Store managed to reach the 50 billion app downloads milestone that was celebrated by offering a $10,000 gift card to the person who downloaded the 50 billionth app. Also, last month the App Store managed to hit 1 million live apps. Apple will report its financial earnings for the holiday quarter (which should be interesting as it will include iPhone and iPad sales during the holidays) this month, on January 27th.
