Apple today announced that it set a new single day record for the App Store, with $386 million worth of sales on New Year’s Day, an increase of 20% over last year. The App Store also set a new record for sales between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, with $1.42 billion in revenue.
Apple announced the numbers as part of a press release that looked back on Apple’s “landmark” year of services offerings.
Apple says that since the App Store launched in 2008, developers have earned $155 billion with a quarter of that figure happening in just the last year.
Commissions from the App Store remain the majority of Apple’s Services business, and both developers and investors will be pleased by the 20% growth statistics for the holiday period. However, calculating sales across this year, it means Apple would have paid developers about $38 billion (one quarter of $155 billion). This compares to $34 billion paid out in 2018, or an annual increase of ~10%.
The press release enumerated Apple’s other services, like Apple Music, Apple News+, Apple Arcade, Apple Card, Apple Pay, and Apple TV+. However, Apple did not reveal as detailed numbers. The company did say that more than half of Apple Music users have taken advantage of the new real-time lyrics feature introduced in iOS 13.
Apple once again reiterated that a native Apple TV app will come to LG, Sony, and VIZIO smart TVs later this year. Apple said that the Apple News app has over 100 million active users, although no word on Apple News+ uptake.
For Apple Pay, Apple said that contactless transit will roll out to more locations including Washington, D.C., Shenzhen, and Guangzhou. Apple will also introduce contactless student ID at more universities across the United States.
The press release concludes by promising further expansion across all of its services in 2020:
