Ahead of its Worldwide Developer Conference on June 9, Apple on Thursday offered a new update on its global App Store business, sharing that developers generated $1.3 trillion in billings and sales in 2024. The company stressed that 90% of those billings and sales did not involve paying Apple a commission.
The study also noted that developer billings and sales for digital goods and services in 2024 totaled $131 billion, driven by mobile games, photo and video editing apps, and other enterprise tools. Physical goods and services, meanwhile, topped $1 trillion, thanks to increased demand for online food delivery and pickup, and online grocery apps.
In-app advertising revenue was $150 billion last year.
Spending across digital goods and services, physical goods and services, and in-app advertising has more than doubled since 2019, with physical goods and services seeing the strongest growth at more than 2.6 times, Apple said.
The numbers are intended to highlight how the App Store creates financial opportunities for mobile developers that extend beyond sales from in-app purchases. The storefront provides a place for developers to have their apps discovered by consumers, and Apple provides the technical infrastructure required to run an app business.
This position ignores the fact that the App Store is now a mature ecosystem, and apps are a selling point for the iPhone itself. Developers today have a number of tools at their disposal to host, distribute, and manage their own applications, if they choose, but Apple’s policies prevent this.
That’s starting to change, however. In a recent court ruling in favor of Epic Games in the U.S., Apple was required to let developers link to their own websites for processing in-app purchases without having to pay Apple a commission. In Europe, the tech giant is fighting against the rules proposed by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which, among other things, directs Apple to give developers the right to inform their customers about alternative payment mechanisms.
The new data comes from an Apple-funded study by economists Professor Andrey Fradkin from the Boston University Questrom School of Business, and Dr. Jessica Burley from Analysis Group. The latter has been working with Apple for years throughout its antitrust legal battles to document the App Store’s success in a more positive light for the company.
The study highlights other regional growth trends, like how the billings and sales facilitated by the App Store more than doubled over the past five years in the U.S., China and Europe. Digital payment spending, meanwhile, also grew by more than 7 times in the U.S. since 2019, thanks to the broad adoption of mobile payments.
The report also reiterated other metrics, like how the App Store attracts 813 million average weekly visitors worldwide, and pointed to the various investments Apple has made in tools and technologies to support developers, like coding and distribution platforms, frameworks, analytics, anti-fraud systems, developer support, and more.
