Apple announces record-breaking $1.1 billion holiday season App Store sales
Apple has confirmed that the 2015 Christmas season was the App Store’s “biggest ever,” and saw iOS app sales of a record-breaking $1 billion in total.
Apple’s biggest ever
Sales over the two week period, ending Jan. 3, 2016, included in-app purchases (IAPs) as well as paid app downloads. According to Apple’s press release, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day were the biggest ever in the App Store’s history; on Jan. 1, customers spent more than $144 million on iOS applications.
Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, said:
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.
We’re grateful to all the developers who have created the most innovative and exciting apps in the world for our customers. We can’t wait for what’s to come in 2016.
The most popular iOS app downloads, Apple added, were for gaming, social networking, and entertainment; Minecraft: Pocket Edition, Trivia Crack, and Heads Up! were some of the most popular apps purchased over the period. Apple noted in the same press release that it has now created more than 1.9 million jobs in the United States, and that 1.4 million of these are made possible by the App Store. This is a staggering feat.
Of course, iOS apps aside, Christmas also brought a significant number of new iPhone 6/6s users, according to recent data provided by one iOS developer. There were also a lot of new Fitbit owners on Christmas Day, too, with the free Fitbit iOS app rocketing up Apple’s App Store charts on Dec. 25 as users set up and configured their new device.
This year, the App Store has had two brand new platforms to cater for: watchOS and tvOS. There’s also been a new iPad, the iPad Pro, and new 3D Touch-optimized applications for the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus have launched, too. As such, it should come as no surprise that 2015 was the App Store’s biggest yet.
