In its latest update on the App Store Apple reported that iOS developers earned $26.5 billion in 2017. A year ago the figure was $20 billion. The growth rate is then about 33%. The cumulative payments to developers can be calculated as $86.5 billion. This amount was generated in a span of less than 10 years, with the first billion paid by June 2010.
The following graph shows the history of cumulative payments and the corresponding payment rate (in $/yr.)
Note that this represents the payment to developers, not the spending by the customer. Apple keeps about 30% of the revenue. The total spending on the App Store is then about 43% higher.1. The equivalent figures for spending on the App Store are shown below. Continue reading “The iOS Economy, Updated”
- During the last year some types of app subscriptions have been priced by Apple at 15% of gross so I adjusted the payment rate to 72% for 2017 [↩]