Apple shares climbed to yet another all-time high on Wednesday after the company had shared impressive insights on its App Store’s holiday performance. Not only did customers spend $1.42 billion on the App Store between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve (up 16 percent year-over-year), but New Year’s Day alone generated $386 million in sales on the App Store, making it the biggest day on record.
Apple also revealed that app developers have earned $155 billion on the App Store since its inception in 2008, with 25 percent of that total coming in 2019 alone. Knowing that Apple takes a 30% cut on most App Store sales, that means the company probably earned $10 to $15 billion in App Store commissions alone last year. Apple claims that the app industry has created more than 1.5 million jobs each in the United States and across Europe since 2008 in what could be described as the 21st century gold rush.
The App Store is only one pillar of Apple’s growing Services business, with Apple Music, Apple Pay, iCloud and most recently Apple TV+ also adding to the segment’s unprecedented success. “2019 was the biggest year for Services in Apple’s history,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, said in a statement on Wednesday, referring not only to the fact that the company generated $46 billion in revenue from services last year, but also to the launches of several new services including Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade.
