Apple now has over 2M apps in App Store, paid nearly $50B to developers

At its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the App Store recently reached a milestone with more than two million apps in circulation, which have generated nearly $50 billion for developers.

With millions of titles at customers' fingertips, Apple's digital storefront has clocked more than 130 billion individual downloads since its launch in 2008, Cook said.

In related news, Cook said more than 5,000 developers from 74 countries turned out for WWDC 2016, including 350 scholarship recipients. As always, Apple is looking to cultivate its future developer community. This year, 120 attendees are under 18 years old, the youngest being nine years old.

"i met her yesterday and she is going to make one heck of a developer," Cook said.

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5 Comments

ericthehalfbee

said about 7 years ago

sog35 said:

So on average a developer makes $25 per app they make?
So much trash out there.

What a stupid comment. There are countless Apps which are 100% free and exist as a service. Those developers (or teams of developers) are getting paid a hell of a lot more than $25 for their work.

I have Apps for my banks and credit cards, my daughters schools, my hockey rec league, my local butcher, the public library, the community/rec Centre near me, my insurance companies (work and personal), my Chevy and BMW and a bunch more. All free, all very useful and developed by either an in-house team or contracted out to an independent developer.

While I agree there's trash out there, it's absolutely stupid to divide total money paid out by total number of Apps to arrive at that rudiculous $25 figure.

otterfish

said about 7 years ago

"Apple now has ... paid nearly $50B to developers" or in other words "Developers have earned nearly $20B for Apple".

Rocwurst

said about 7 years ago

sog35 said:

So on average a developer makes $25 per app they make?
So much trash out there.

What a silly comment as Eric mentioned. In addition, Being a registered developer doesn't mean you've actually published an app on the App Store.

App Annie reported the actual number of active app publishers are significantly lower than that figure (2015 numbers): Apple App Store: 1,773,110 Apps and 390,371 Publishers in 155 Countries Google Play Store: 2,153,359 Apps and 594,769 Publishers in 101 Countries .

Vision Mobiles's Q2 2015 Developer Economic report gives us a bit more useful insight into what these developers actually make:

- 8% of iOS developers (17,000 devs) generate greater than $2.4 Million annually - 7% or 15,000 iOS devs make between $600K and $2.4 Million p.a. - 24% or 50,000 iOS devs make between $60K and $600K p.a.

In terms of Android developers, Vision Mobile then reports:

“It turns out that Android is not even the second best platform for revenues. Of those prioritising the mobile browser, 47% are below the app poverty line, making less than $500 and 29% make more than $5,000 per month"

"Android developers look poor in comparison with 55% earning less than $500 per month from the platform and just 19% earning more than $5,000 per month. In fact, the revenue distribution for Android-first developers doesn’t look much better than that for those targeting BlackBerry 10 or Windows Phone either. Since the user base for Android is more than an order of magnitude bigger, this is astonishing.”

“Speculation that Android’s overwhelming market share would eventually tempt top iOS developers to switch their priorities seem to have been unfounded. If anything, the reverse is likely to happen as the app economy continues to mature.”