The app industry is now bigger than Hollywood

App store
The appening place to be

After some hefty number crunching, analysts have found that iOS app developers raked in $10 billion during the course of 2014, which was more than US box office takings over the same period.

Total App Store revenues (since 2008) have reached $25 billion, according to Asymco, while app prices rose 50% across the year.

Overall, apps are dominating the revenue earned by both Apple and its developers from the iTunes Store. More revenue is generated by apps than books, TV shows, movies and music put together.

Take that, Tinseltown

If you're about to ditch your agent for a coding tutor then here are some more Asymco stats to encourage you: some app developers can earn more than the big Hollywood stars and the average developer earnings are higher than those for actors.

The US box office figures show a little over $10 billion was spent in 2014, so presumably App Store revenue only just pipped it - if only you'd watched Guardians of the Galaxy again instead of buying Monument Valley, it might have been a different story.

2015 is off to a good start, too: Asymco says that $500 million was spent on iOS apps in the first week of January, so another record-breaking year could be on the cards. "It's also likely that the app industry is healthier [than the movie industry]," says Asymco's Horace Dediu.

David Nield
Freelance Contributor

Dave is a freelance tech journalist who has been writing about gadgets, apps and the web for more than two decades. Based out of Stockport, England, on TechRadar you'll find him covering news, features and reviews, particularly for phones, tablets and wearables. Working to ensure our breaking news coverage is the best in the business over weekends, David also has bylines at Gizmodo, T3, PopSci and a few other places besides, as well as being many years editing the likes of PC Explorer and The Hardware Handbook.

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