Baking iBooks into iOS 8 has led to 1M new users for Apple every week

Since iOS 8 debuted, iBooks has become an uninstallable native app on all iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices. That move has worked well for Apple, as the company revealed on Thursday that iBooks has averaged one million new customers every week since.

The data point was disclosed by Keith Moerer, director of iBooks, in an appearance at the Digital Book World conference in New York City, as summarized by GigaOm. In addition to its inclusion in iOS 8, iBooks sales have also benefitted from the larger displays of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, he said, with more users buying titles on their phones.

Moerer also boasted that Apple charges the same split, taking a 30 percent cut of all sales, whether a book is published by a major company, or if it is self-published by a smaller author. He said this helps Apple to support the creative professionals who frequently use its hardware and software.

"We view what we do as an expansion of our support of print professionals on the hardware and software side and the way we run our other media business," he said.

After debuting on the iPad in 2010, iBooks later expanded to the iPhone and iPod touch with iOS 4. It finally debuted on the Mac as well in 2013 with OS X Mavericks.

The iBooks platform and its digital textbook offerings have been a major part of Apple's push to sell iPads to education institutions. But up until iOS 8, iBooks was an optional download from the iOS App Store.

Joining iBooks as a built-in application starting with iOS 8 was also Apple's Podcasts app. Other downloads however, like iTunes U, Find My iPhone, or the iWork and iLife suites, remain optional downloads.