Apple App Store Records All-Time High in Sales in July; Tech Giant May Have 'Pokemon Go' to Thank For
Tech giant Apple set a record all-time high in July as its App Store saw to its highest-ever monthly billings, CEO Tim Cook revealed on Twitter Wednesday, August 3.
He also congratulated App Store developers, who have now earned a massive $50 million over the lifetime of the software, which was launched in 2008. Alongside the billings, they have also earned the highest amount of money paid out to them.
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"Congratulations on your success and inspired creativity," Cook tweeted.
'Pokemon Go' Success
No doubt the App Store was buoyed by the runaway success of Niantic game "Pokemon Go," which was launched in the United States on July 5. It had earlier set an App Store record for being the most downloaded app in any app release history on its first week, and is widely considered to be the biggest mobile game in US history.
While Cook made no mention of the popular game attributing to this success, it can certainly be assumed, as "Pokemon Go" was estimated to have been downloaded for more than 100 million times and is said to rake in $10 million in revenue daily in iOS and Google Play stores, according to analytics firm App Annie.
In addition to this, Sensor Tower reported that since its release, the popular app has earned more than $45 million in net revenue worldwide from Apple Store and Google Play Services. It also reported that the average iPhone user spends 33 minutes on the game alone, surpassing the average user time of Facebook and Snapchat.
$3 Billion Sales Projected for Apple
Moreover, Apple could make upwards of $3 billion in sales over the next year from "Pokemon Go" alone--spurred by the purchases of lucky eggs, storage, and Pokeballs--as the company gets a 30 percent cut from all in-app sales, according to Needham.
This news comes at the heels of Apple's most recent earnings call, where Cook reported a record-setting quarter--37 percent growth rate over the year for App Store. It also set a new record for purchases through the software platform.
Apple expects that over the year, revenue from Apple's services business alone, which includes the App Store, iTunes, iCloud, Apple Music, Apple Pay, Apple Care, will be the size of the Fortune 100 company. It has been reported that the company's revenue from these services has jumped to $23.1 billion.
Meanwhile, Apple's revenue from three major platforms--iPad, iPhone, and iMac, continue to decline. For the third fiscal quarter of 2016, the company posted revenue of $42.2 billion and a quarterly profit of $7.8 billion.
