Apple’s App Store knew exactly how to ring in the new year.
The tech giant announced that its App Store welcomed 2017 by having its highest single day ever on New Year’s Day with nearly $240 million in purchases.
The App Store’s busiest single day ever on New Year’s Day was the icing on the cake of a record-breaking holiday season, a year of unprecedented developer earnings and breakout app hits, Apple said in a press release.
“2016 was a record-shattering year for the App Store, generating $20 billion for developers, and 2017 is off to a great start with Jan. 1 as the single biggest day ever on the App Store,” Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, explained. “We want to thank our entire developer community for the many innovative apps they have created — which, together with our products, help to truly enrich people’s lives.”
In 2016 alone, developers earned over $20 billion via the App Store, an increase of more than 40 percent compared to 2015. Since its launch in 2008, the App Store has enabled developers to earn more than $60 billion.
Customer purchases also broke records last year, with holiday season sales from the App Store topping $3 billion in December. According to Apple, big hit apps like Super Mario Run and Pokémon Go have taken the top spots among last year’s most downloaded apps worldwide.
Last month, Schiller took to Twitter to share that Apple set a new record for App Store revenue in November 2016 as well. At the time, Schiller said in the tweet that November saw the highest monthly sales ever for the App Store.
The record sales growth in the Apple App Store shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise since developers do a brisk business in creating and selling apps for Apple devices.
This past summer, Sensor Tower, an app intelligence firm, said the number of mobile apps available for purchase or download through the App Store is expected to double in size and surpass 5 million by 2020. According to Sensor Tower, the App Store is expected to have about 2.93 million apps by the end of 2016, 3.6 million in 2017, 4.18 million in 2018, 4.67 million in 2019 and 5.06 million by 2020.
When Apple debuted the App Store in 2008, it had about 5,000 by the end of the first year, according to Sensor Tower. By the end of 2015, that figure had swelled to about 1.75 million, and today there are more than 2 million apps available for download through the App Store.
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