iPhone, iPad owners spent S$13b on apps in 2013

LONDON — iPhone and iPad owners spent more than US$10 billion (S$13 billion) on apps and in-app purchases from Apple’s App Store last year, including more than US$1 billion in the final month of the year.

Apple announced the figures yesterday (Jan 7), while noting that iOS developers have earned more than US$15 billion since the store’s launch in July 2008. The company takes a 30 per cent cut of app sales, indicating more than US$21.4 billion of spending on and within iOS apps in the five-and-a-half year period.

The announcement differs notably from Apple’s corresponding release in January last year, when it revealed that iOS users had downloaded nearly 20 billion apps in 2012, but gave no figures for consumer spending for that year, although it did say that total payouts to developers had reached US$7 billion by the end of 2012.

Comparing the two announcements also reveals that more than 225,000 new iOS apps were launched last year, taking the App Store catalogue from 775,000 at the end of 2012 to more than one million a year later. December iOS downloads increased by 50 per cent from 2 billion in 2012 to 3 billion last year, too.

It is no surprise to see Apple publicising iOS spending and developer payouts. Google’s rival Android platform now has a much bigger market share for smartphones, and is eroding the iPad’s share of the tablet market too. With Google still not giving out spending and payout figures for Android, Apple’s pitch is that it still provides the most lucrative platform for developers.

Will this remain the case this year? In December, app analytics company Distimo claimed that the revenue gap between Apple’s App Store and Android’s Google Play store was narrowing, estimating that on a typical day in November, global revenues for the 200 top grossing iOS apps were more than US$18 million versus US$12 million for the comparable selection on Google Play — compared to US$15 million and US$3.5 million respectively a year before.

Apple’s latest figures suggest that in December, all iOS apps — not just the top 200 — were generating US$32.3 million a day, on average — while over the whole of last year, the US$8 billion of developer payouts suggest average daily iOS app revenues of US$27.4 million.

Apple’s latest announcement praises the work of companies including Evernote, Yahoo, Airbnb, OpenTable, Tumblr, Pinterest and American Airlines to update their apps for its iOS 7 operating system last year, while singling out some of the most successful iOS apps of the year — among the “surprise hits” are Heads Up, Moves, Afterlight and Impossible Road, as well as other games such as Candy Crush Saga, Puzzle & Dragons, Minecraft, QuizUp and Clumsy Ninja.

“The lineup of apps for the holiday season was astonishing and we look forward to seeing what developers create in 2014,” said Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services Eddy Cue in a statement, which also picked out independent firms Duolingo, Simogo, Frogmind, Plain Vanilla, Atypical Games, Lemonista, Base and Savage Interactive as “developers to watch in 2014”. THE GUARDIAN