App Store sales rose 50 percent in 2014 to around $15 billion

by James Vincent

Source Apple and (2)

Jan 8, 2015, 5:50 PM UTC

For every dollar spent in the App Store, Apple gets 30 cents. It’s a simple fact, but one worth remembering today, as Apple announces record sales figures for the App Store. The company says that billings rose 50 percent in 2014 with developers taking more than $10 billion in revenue from apps and in-app purchases throughout the year. Only eight days into 2015, and the App Store has broken two more records: the single biggest day ever on New Year’s Day, and its best week ever — with nearly half a billion dollars spent in the first seven days of January.

The App Store is a small portion of Apple's revenue — but strongly profitable

This means that last year the App Store saw total sales of around $15 billion (it was $10 billion in 2013) of which Apple took home some $4.5 billion. As the WSJ points out, this is only a small portion of the company's annual sales of $183 billion sales, but it's huge compared to the costs of running the App Store — meaning it's still a "meaningful contributor" to the company's profits.

Apple has released these new App Store figures alongside a lengthy appraisal of its contribution to the US economy. The company claims to have “created or supported” more than one million jobs in America, with just under two-thirds of these “attributable to the iOS ecosystem.” The remaining third is split between jobs at companies that have “resulted” from Apple’s spending and growth (334,000) and jobs directly created by Apple — including engineers, tech support, and retail staff (some 66,000 employees altogether).

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