Investors might be a bit bearish right now, as far as Apple’s share price is concerned, but the Cupertino-giant continues to clock record-breaking sales, earlier with its quarter results, and now with freshly data on its App Store billings.
Announcing fresh stats on its billing during the month of July, Apple said on Thursday, that the company made a whopping $1.7 Billion in billings. Moreover, it also broke records in China, in what appears to be a China year for world’s second largest smartphone maker, across all segments.
Lets get some clear statistics now. Till date, Apple has paid a staggering $33 Billion to app developers for its platform, with $8 Billion of that number coming from 2015 alone. And to map the sheer surge in app store billings, let me tell you, for the sake of comparison of course, that the company had paid $20 Billion to developers just over a year ago.
This was just the overall picture though, amore interesting one is that which involves China.
China continues to be one of Apple’s strongest and most revenue generating markets at the moment. While we have already seen how China surpassed the U.S. in terms of iPhone sales for this year alone, the same has been replicated on the App Store as well.
According to a report published by App Annie in April, China had surpassed the US in terms of App Store downloads. China’s iOS App Store downloads exploded, growing 30% year-over-year in Q1 2015, making it the largest country in the world in terms of iOS downloads, overtaking the United States. The report attributed this surge to two major drivers — growing installed base and larger iPhone screen sizes.
And Apple too, has responded to the Chinese demand and love for its brand. The company upped its number of stores in China to 19 by April this year, and has already said of taking that number to over 40 by mid 2016.
While China is second in the total number of downloads, the country currently sits at third spot in terms of revenue generation from those downloads, just tad behind the second spot Japan. Other major market for Apple includes Australia and the U.K.
