Apple on Thursday announced that the App Store saw a record-breaking $300 million in purchases on New Year’s Day. The feat capped off an impressive week for the Cupertino firm’s digital storefront, which saw nearly $900 million in sales during the 7-day period starting on Christmas Eve.
Here’s the full announcement, posted on Apple’s website this afternoon:
App Store customers around the world made apps and games a bigger part of their holiday season in 2017 than ever before, culminating in $300 million in purchases made on New Year’s Day 2018. During the week starting on Christmas Eve, a record number of customers made purchases or downloaded apps from the App Store, spending over $890 million in that seven-day period.
“We are thrilled with the reaction to the new App Store and to see so many customers discovering and enjoying new apps and games,” said Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “We want to thank all of the creative app developers who have made these great apps and helped to change people’s lives. In 2017 alone, iOS developers earned $26.5 billion — more than a 30 percent increase over 2016.”
The press release goes on to mention that Pokémon GO made its way back to the App Store charts on December 21 with the introduction of new AR (augmented reality) features built on top of Apple’s just-introduced ARKit framework, which give the title more detailed and realistic gameplay.
Since the App Store launched in July 2008, Apple says that iOS developers have earned over $86 billion.
Source: Apple