Apple cash from app downloads hits $3 billion

Apple cash from app downloads hits $3 billion
Who thought flinging birds would be worth so much?

Apple has been crowing about its app download figures again, with a record-breaking December seeing two billion downloads.

Cook's Crew has been hitting a lot of milestones recently, according to its release, claiming 40 billion app downloads since the App Store opened its virtual doors in mid-2008.

It's stating that it has paid out $7bn (£4.3bn, AUS$ 6.66bn) to developers over that period, making it easy to work out that Apple has nabbed itself $3bn (£1.85bn, AUS$ 2.85bn)

On top of that, Apple is shouting that it has over 500 million active accounts worldwide, with people downloading apps by the bucketload, given there are only around 775,000 titles approved on the App Store.

Only the good stuff

That 40 billion mark apparently doesn't even take into account those apps re-downloaded or updated, making it a really impressive number in just four years.

Half of those were downloaded in 2012 alone, showing the speed with which the app ecosystem is growing. However, it seems the numbers may be plateauing - we reported 25 billion had been sucked down by March and 30 billion by June of this year.

So the rate of 5 billion every three months has continued, and with rumours that Google has actually surpassed the amount of apps it has available (quality notwithstanding) it seems that there are finally two dominant app portals for users to choose from.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.

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