iOS App Store Nets Over 170B Downloads; Nearly 3K Apps Earn Over $1M A Year

A new report has revealed that more apps are making $1 million a year, while the App Store has netted more than 170 billion downloads over the past decade – that’s more than $130 billion in consumer spending.

App intelligence firm App Annie marked the App Store’s 10th anniversary by looking at its growth. It’s important to keep in mind, though, that the App Store launched in July 2008, while App Annie arrived in 2010. So the data for the report covers July 2010 through December 2017.

“Considering the now integral role of smartphones in our daily lives, it’s hard to believe it’s only been 10 years since the iPhone App Store first launched, followed shortly by the Google Play store (which at the time was called the Android Market),” according to a company report. “In that time, smartphones and apps have gone from nice-to-haves to absolute essentials for many consumers and businesses. Case in point, in 2017 there were almost four billion connected mobile devices generating 178 billion annual app downloads and more than $81 billion in app store consumer spend.”

App Annie’s data shows that 10,000 apps have individually generated over $1 million in consumer spending since 2010, with 2,293 in the $1 million to $10 million range during 2017. In addition, 564 apps made over $10 million each.

Currently, users in several countries have around 100 apps installed on their iOS devices, including Australia, India, China, Germany, Brazil, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia and France. Users in France, Indonesia and South Korea have the highest numbers of apps installed, around 112.

And while the United States is the world’s top country for both downloads (40.1 billion) and consumer spending ($36 billion), China is a close second with 39.9 billion downloads and $27.7 billion in revenue.

As for the future, iOS App Store spending is expected to grow by 80 percent over the next five years, going from $42.5 billion in 2017 to a predicted $75.7 billion in 2022.

“With significant growth still to come, the iOS App Store will continue to provide amazing opportunities to businesses across industries,” wrote App Annie’s Lexi Sydow.