Apple App Store’s Sales Surge, But Is Growth Slowing?

Apple’s App Store results show the company had a banner 2015 year, but is that momentum slowing?

While the tech giant recorded a record-breaking $20 billion in sales from its App Store — bringing in more than $6 billion in revenue — there’s also signs that growth has begun to slow, according to calculations from a Wall Street Journal report.

What that report detailed is that the signs of slowing growth come from the App Store billing figures, which grew to 50 percent in 2014. In 2015, that same figure had only grown 40 percent. But WSJ noted that that figure was rough since Apple didn’t release specific figures. By doing a few calculation comparisons, what WSJ was able to unfold was that Apple’s billings for 2015 grew about 43 percent, but that was below 2014’s growth of 50 percent.

Apple touted its “record-breaking holiday season” in a news release on Wednesday (Jan. 6), when it shared that the two weeks that ended Jan. 3 totaled more than $1.1 billion on apps and in-app purchases. Jan. 1, the company noted, was its biggest day for the App Store, with more than $144 million spent.

“The App Store had a holiday season for the record books. We are excited that our customers downloaded and enjoyed so many incredible apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV, spending over $20 billion on the App Store last year alone,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing.

Since its inception in 2008, the App Store has brought in roughly $40 billion for its developers, the company said, noting that a third of that was generated in 2015. Apple also said the app business has been a lucrative one for job creation, as it noted in its release that 1.9 million jobs have been created. Nearly three-quarters of those jobs (over 1.4 million) were created in relation to the app creator, software engineer and entrepreneur sectors for building iOS apps and non-IT jobs that impact the app economy, according to data from the Progressive Policy Institute (partially sponsored by Apple).