Affiliate Disclosure
If you buy through our links, we may get a commission. Read our ethics policy.

Apple has now paid $4 billion to App Store developers

The value of Apple's platforms is reflected in the amount of revenue the company's App Stores pays its developers, a figure that has now hit $4 billion.

Apple first announced having paid out over $1 billion to developers in June 2010, after just over two years of App Store sales involving over five billion app downloads.

Last summer, the amount paid to developers had jumped to 2.5 billion, more than doubling in both size and pace in just one year.

Four months later in October at the iPhone 4S launch, Apple stated it had sold 250 million iOS devices and that the App Store had seen a total of 18 billion downloads, paying out over $3 billion to developers.

Apple has now reached $700,000 in payments to developers in just a quarter, pushing its cumulative payouts to developers above $4 billion.

Google recently reported matching Apple's milestone of 250,000 mobile device sales across all of its Android licensees, but Apple has upped its number above 315 million iOS devices, due to sales of 67.87 million iOS products in the holiday quarter.

In December, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt predicted that mobile developers would "prioritize" Android development over iOS in the first half of 2012, stating that "ultimately, application vendors are driven by volume, and volume is favored by the open approach Google is taking."

Commercial developers in general appear to be more interested in revenue than volume distribution of their code, but Google itself has pursued a strategy that favors volume over revenue, giving away its software in hopes of establishing a broad advertising platform.

Last October, Google reported a mobile revenues "run rate" approaching $2.5 billion annually, with much of that revenue coming from iOS devices, not just Android. Apple's $13.06 billion in profits for the holiday quarter was greater than Google's entire revenue of $10.6 billion.

One year ago, Google's Android platform manager Eric Chu said that his company was "not happy" about the limited number of apps actually being purchased by Android users, and described plans to turn those figures around.



17 Comments

suddenly newton 15 Years · 13819 comments

Was it really necessary to bring up what Eric Schmidt said in an article about what Apple pays App Store developers? I mean, the article itself is off topic!

dickprinter 17 Years · 1058 comments

Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Apple has now reached $700,000 in payments to developers in just a quarter, pushing its cumulative payouts to developers above $4 billion.

Ummm, that number should have 3 more zeros and another comma.

$700,000,000

$700 million

$7 hundred million

booga 22 Years · 1081 comments

Actually, Apple hasn't paid developers anything. Apple's users have paid $5.2B in payments that Apple has processed for the developers for a 30% cut.

If Apple paid us, they'd have to give us 1099's... just sayin'...

mhikl 14 Years · 471 comments

Google has big dreams while Apple makes dreams come true.

Slow and steadily Apple works its magic. What a headache Apple?s success must be to Google. Chairman Eric Schmidt?s prognostication skills seem to be failing him.

ascii 20 Years · 5930 comments

Quote:
Originally Posted by Booga

Actually, Apple hasn't paid developers anything. Apple's users have paid $5.2B in payments that Apple has processed for the developers for a 30% cut.

If Apple paid us, they'd have to give us 1099's... just sayin'...

That's right. It's always felt a bit odd the way Apple talk about how much they've paid developers, when they're just a transaction processor, a conduit. It's quite clearly spin. Though in fairness there would be no such revenue stream had they not created the platform.