Neil Hughes
Apple on Wednesday began touting its success in Europe, claiming that it has created or supported 629,000 new jobs in the continent, with nearly 500,000 of those from the so-called "app economy."
The stats were revealed on a new section of the company's site entitled "Apple's Job Creation in Europe." The iPhone maker states that its App Store has enabled European developers to earn $6.5 billion from App Store sales, from a total of $20 billion in sales worldwide.
"This job growth for coders, developers, entrepreneurs, and others would not have existed without Apple's innovation and technology," the company said. "We also provide app developers with the tools and distribution they need to bring their best ideas to hundreds of millions of iOS customers worldwide through the incredible App Store."
Of the 629,000 new jobs Apple takes responsibility for, it says 497,000 of those are directly attributable to the App Store. Another 132,000 are jobs directly or indirectly supported by Apple, while 116,000 positions in Europe are said to have been created as a result of Apple's growth.
Finally, Apple itself employs 16,000 people directly in Europe, bringing the total sum to 629,000.
Looking forward, Apple projects that the overall "app economy" will deliver $16.5 billion in revenues to the European Union gross domestic product in 2014. This sum is reportedly growing at 12 percent per year.
Breaking down members of its paid developer program by country, Apple says it has created 61,100 positions in the U.K., 52,200 jobs in Germany, 30,000 jobs in France, 20,900 positions in Italy, and 18,300 new jobs in the Netherlands.
As for Apple's own employees, most — Â 5,000 — of them are located in the U.K. Another 4,000 are found in Ireland, where the company has its international headquarters in Cork.
Apple share similar U.S.-specific statistics last year, at the time claiming that 80,000 new American jobs were created by the iOS "app economy" in the year 2012. The amount Apple pays to its developers has been steadily growing, and the company revealed on Tuesday that the month of July was the best ever for the App Store, both in terms of revenue and number of customers.
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18 Comments
This should be full page in everyday newspapers imho.
A little bit overly self-congratulatory for my tastes, given that these developers have in turn added an enormous amount of value to Apple's own products, which is given no mention. But still, impressive numbers.
I saw an article earlier today (forgive me, I've completely forgotten where) that claimed that 50% of developers in the app economy are employed on iOS development, which is very impressive too.
How many jobs did they take away by killing the likes of Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Symbian?
[quote name="RichL" url="/t/181708/apple-says-its-app-store-has-resulted-in-a-half-million-new-jobs-in-europe-alone#post_2574648"]How many jobs did they take away by killing the likes of Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Symbian? ;) [/quote] Not sure that's the correct characterization. Apple simply did its own thing. It was customer preference for Apple products and a failure to innovate on the part of those companies that caused their downfall.
A half-million new jobs? What ad agency did Apple hire to come up with that claim--or perhaps it came from one of their lawyers. Both groups play fast and loose with the truth. A job is full-time, providing enough income to support one's self and a family. It also often comes with benefits attached. What Apple is talking about is "work," or more accurately occasional work. Selling apps is for most developers like a teenager who picks up a little money in the summer mowing neighbor's yards. The added income may be helpful, but it's not enough to live on. Note that the article mentions that last year Apple claimed that its app store created 80,000 U.S. jobs. That's certainly a believable figure. But the very fact that it's believable makes that 500,000 jobs claim for Europe ridiculous. To believe that, we'd have to assume that Europeans are over six times as capable of developing apps as Americans. I want to be fair though. I don't develop apps, but I do write and publish books through the iBookstore. For ebooks, Apple pays the best royalties among all the major retailers. In fact, outside the narrow $2.99 to $9.99 price range, it pays twice per sale what Amazon pays. That is good. With apps like Book Proofer and iBooks Author, Apple also offers for more support for ebook development than Amazon. Apple worked with Adobe to make sure that the latest update to InDesign does marvelous reflowable and fixed format epub export. When I create a print version of a book in InDesign, both versions of epub can be exported in just minutes. That is marvelous. In contrast, Amazon--I have from insiders--has refused to offer any support to Adobe in creating Kindle Mobi/KF8 export from ID. In fact I recently queried Kindle support, asking if Amazon could convert fixed format epub to fixed format KF8. (I do textbooks, so fixed format is important.) Amazon's answer was mean-spirited. It said in essence: if you want that, pay some third party firm thousands of dollars to hand code it. We're not going to help you by updating and improving our now obsolete ID plug-in. Apple deserves to be commended for the support it offers both app developer and authors. It treats them well and pays them well. It doesn't need to cook the books, making ridiculous claims about jobs created. What it does is already impressive, however many full-time jobs it creates. For that, Apple deserves more credit than it is getting. --Michael W. Perry, Inkling Books, Auburn, AL