A customer at an Apple store testing out different products before making his Black Friday purchase. (Photo : Getty Images/George Frey)
Apple is one of the largest technology companies in recent memory. Year after year, they bring in billions of dollars from the sales of their highly sought after products. Now it has been revealed that a large part of their multi-billion dollar income comes from the sales of the applications in their online app store.
Apple releases reports about their app sales every year around this time of year. Since the app store was first introduced back in 2008, Apple claims that there has already been a massive payout of around $60 billion to various developers, the Motley Fool reported. Approximately $20 billion of this total was amassed over the course of 2016, which means the past year garnered 40 percent more than 2015.
A lion's share of Apple's income came from app sales this past New Year's Day, Apple Newsroom reported. In fact, Jan. 1 was the single busiest day for the Apple App store with over $240 million in sales reported.
Unsurprisingly, the top grossing applications from the app store were games. Namely, these were: "Monster Strike," "Fantasy Westward," "Clash Royale," and "Pokemon Go." Another game made sizeable waves during the holiday season, with "Super Mario Run" being the most downloaded app around the world on Christmas and New Year's Day.
Subscription apps also raked in large amounts of money over the course of 2016. Netflix, HBO Now, Line, Tinder, and MLB.com at Bat are just some of the widely popular subscription services available on the app store. Subscription application also reached another major milestone during the fall season of 2016, as subscriptions became available across all 25 app categories.
However, app developers are not only about profit, as some chose to develop their applications for the sake of the greater good. Altogether, developers were helped raise over $17 million dollars to help combat AIDS globally.
The introduction of various iMessage applications and SiriKit with iOS 10 allowed developers to create messaging apps in an easier manner. In fact, there are now over 21,000 iMessaging applications to choose from, while a wider variety of commands in applications can now be accessed through Siri as well.
Watch a hands-on video on the revamped Apple app store below:
