Apple on Thursday announced that the App Store broke records on the first of January. The company says New Year’s Day was the Store’s single busiest day ever with nearly $240 million in revenue.
The day put a nice cap on a record-breaking holiday season and year. Apple says App Store purchases topped $3 billion in December alone, and developers were paid more than $20 billion in 2016.
“2016 was a record-shattering year for the App Store, generating $20 billion for developers, and 2017 is off to a great start with Jan. 1 as the single biggest day ever on the App Store,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “We want to thank our entire developer community for the many innovative apps they have created — which together with our products — help to truly enrich people’s lives.”
Here are some of the other stats mentioned in the press release:
- Super Mario Run saw over 40 million downloads in its first 4 days, and was the most app downloaded globally on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.
- Nintendo’s hit runner also cracked 2016’s top 10 most downloaded apps, along with Pokémon Go.
- Independently developed apps like Prisma, Reigns, Procreate, Lumino City, Sweat With Kayla and djay Pro were among the most successful last year.
- There are now more than 2.2 million apps in the App Store.
- The App Store is available in 155 countries
- Custom App Store campaigns helped raise more than $17 million for World Wildlife Fund and (RED) last year.
- There are over 21,000 iMessage apps.
- App Store’s subscription billings were $2.7 billion in 2016, up 74% from previous year.
It’s not surprising to see Apple touting its App Store numbers. The company has consistently pointed to its services division amidst slumping iPhone sales. Expect to hear a lot more about it on Jan. 31.
Source: Apple