Ahead of the Worldwide Developer Conference on June 9, Apple on Thursday offered new updates to its global App Store business, sharing that developers generated $1.3 trillion in billing and sales in 2024.
The study also noted that developer billing and sales of digital products and services in 2024 totaled $131 billion driven by mobile games, photo and video editing apps and other enterprise tools. Meanwhile, physical goods and services have exceeded $1 trillion thanks to increased demand for online food delivery and pickup, as well as online grocery apps.
In-app ad revenue was $150 billion last year.
Apple said spending between digital goods and services, physical goods and services, and in-app ads has more than doubled since 2019, with physical goods and services growing at more than 2.6 times.
The figures aim to highlight how the App Store creates financial opportunities for mobile developers who exceed sales from in-app purchases. StoreFront provides a place for developers to discover apps by consumers, and Apple provides the technical infrastructure needed to run an app business.
This position ignores the fact that the App Store is a mature ecosystem and that the app is a selling point for the iPhone itself. Today's developers are free to use many tools at their disposal to host, distribute and manage their own applications, if they choose, but Apple's policies hamper this.
But that's starting to change. In recent courts in favor of the epic game in the US, Apple had to allow developers to link to their websites in order to process in-app purchases without paying the committee. In Europe, tech giants are fighting the rules proposed by the Digital Markets Act (DMA). This instructs, among other things, to provide Apple the right to notify customers about alternative payment mechanisms.
The new data comes from an Apple-funded study by Andrei Floodkin, an economist professor at Boston University's Questrom School of Business, and Dr. Jessica Burley, analytics group. The latter has worked with Apple for many years through antitrust legal battles to document the success of the App Store from a more positive perspective for the company.
The study highlights growth trends in other regions, including how billing and sales have been promoted in the US, China and Europe more than twice as much in the last five years. Meanwhile, digital payments have increased more than seven times in the US since 2019 thanks to widespread adoption of mobile payments.
Other metrics have also repeated, such as how the App Store attracts an average weekly visitor of 813 million worldwide, pointing to the various investments Apple has made in tools and technologies that support developers, including coding platforms, frameworks, analytics, anti-fulard systems, and developer support.