Apple Announces 40 Billion App Downloads To Remind Developers Of Where The Money Is

This morning Apple issued a press release announcing that the iTunes App Store had reached 40 billion app downloads. It also said in the release that nearly half of those had come in 2012:

Apple today announced that customers have downloaded over 40 billion apps, with nearly 20 billion in 2012 alone. The App Store has over 500 million active accounts and had a record-breaking December with over two billion downloads during the month. Apple’s incredible developer community has created over 775,000 apps for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users worldwide, and developers have been paid over seven billion dollars by Apple.

A key part of the announcement, mentioned previously by Apple CEO Tim Cook, is that “developers have been paid over $7 billion by Apple.”

As Google Play has all but closed the app-gap with iOS Apple in terms of sheer volume of available apps, Cupertino wants to remind developers where they’re likely to make the most money and see the most adoption.

Source: Distimo most downloaded apps in 2012

The Apple list above (per Distimo) is somewhat different than the list put out by the company at the end of last year.

Distimo’s 2012 year end report states that on a percentage basis Google Play’s growth was greater than the App Store’s. However the App Store generates considerably more revenue than Google Play currently does:

Google Play showed tremendous growth in the past four months, with an aggregated growth of 43% in daily revenues across all 20 countries. The growth in the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad was less spectacular in the past four months with 21% growth in daily revenues, but looking back at January 2012 the Apple App Store grew an estimated 51% in daily revenues . . .

Although the growth of Google Play in the past four months is close to that of the Apple App Store in 2012, it is important to remember the absolute values in the Apple App Store were already much higher . . .

The graphic below shows that both in the App Store and Google Play most paid-app revenues are still concentrated in games, although broadly distributed across categories after that.

Separately Appcelerator’s Q4 global app developer survey (n=2,749) showed that iOS remains the preferred development platform, followed immediately by Android. Windows and other platforms lag both.