App Store Study Shows 90% of What?
Apple today announced the global App Store ecosystem facilitated $1.3 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2024, according to a new study by economists Professor Andrey Fradkin from Boston University Questrom School of Business and Dr. Jessica Burley from Analysis Group. For more than 90 percent of the billings and sales facilitated by the App Store ecosystem, developers did not pay any commission to Apple.
The Analysis Group always comes to the right conclusions.
Following a study looking into the success of the App Store ecosystem in the United States, Apple has sponsored a second study that covers the global App Store in 2024.
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Developer billings and sales of digital goods and services hit $131 billion, primarily from games and photo and video editing apps like those from Adobe. Sales of physical goods and services facilitated by App Store apps exceeded $1 trillion.
How unfair it is that Apple isn’t getting paid when you buy physical goods from Amazon or get food delivered by Domino’s or Instacart. And the study points out that Apple isn’t even counting all the commerce that happens through Safari or Google Chrome! Think of how different things might be if Apple had invented the Web browser.
Apple always releases these studies before WWDC. You might think the idea is to make developers feel good about their position, but that doesn’t make much sense given the contents of the studies. On the one hand, the inflated numbers from physical goods and services are irrelevant to us. It seems like they’re padding the numbers to confuse and get the desired result. On the other hand, if you take Apple at its word that this is what we should focus on, the takeaway is basically that we’re paying huge commissions to Apple for terrible service, but they really want us to know that the giant companies pay nothing. Thanks, that helps a lot. The real audience for these studies is regulators. It’s basically FUD: be careful or you’ll screw up $1.3 trillion of the economy.
This marks the fourth report that Apple has released on the App Store ecosystem in the last week. Last Tuesday, Apple shared a report noting that the App Store prevented over $2 billion in fraudulent transactions in 2024. Two days later, Apple highlighted that the App Store ecosystem in the U.S. facilitated $406 billion in developer billings and sales in 2024.
Finally, the company released its full App Store Transparency Report with details on things like App Store user traffic, fraud prevention, and more. The emphasis on the App Store’s ecosystem comes as Apple continues to face pushback from regulators around its App Store practices.
In the same announcement, Apple brags at length about its “Investment in Developers”:
Apple invests in tools and capabilities that make it easier for developers to distribute their apps and games, be discovered by users around the globe, and grow successful businesses.[…]
The positive tone of today’s announcement is in stark contrast to an Apple statement from 2019 addressing Spotify’s claims:
After using the App Store for years to dramatically grow their business, Spotify seeks to keep all the benefits of the App Store ecosystem — including the substantial revenue that they draw from the App Store’s customers — without making any contributions to that marketplace.[…]
Whenever Apple or Apple apologists claim that App Store commissions are required in order to finance the iOS platform, it’s nonsense. To be clear, I have no objection to Apple having an App Store, and for placing requirements on App Store developers. What’s unique about the iOS platform, though, is that the App Store is the sole method of distribution for third-party software.
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The IAP mandate applies only to a small minority of developers, who are forced to (allegedly) support the ecosystem for the benefit of the majority, who are free riders.
The purpose of this study — also produced in 2020, 2021, and 2023, though not last year — is two-fold. First, it indicates to lawmakers the footprint of the App Store and suggests any further regulatory action would seriously compromise the economy as a whole. The second reason it exists is to soften the impression of Apple’s commission on digital purchases, hence this part of the study and press release, emphasis mine[…] A big amount, but measured against the total estimated economy of $1.3 trillion, it is supposed to be seen as a small fraction — “less than 10%”.
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The thing about the Analysis Group’s report is that it is very broad. While it does not include transactions made through Safari on iOS, things like shopping in Amazon’s app or buying airfare in Kayak’s app are factored in. Whether these purchases were actually facilitated by the App Store ecosystem is questionable to me — would someone have not bought that flight if not for their iPhone?
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Apple has argued in court this commission is for App Store upkeep, developer relations, API development, and for intellectual property licensing. These are things common to all apps. Yet only those facilitating transactions for digital services are expected to pay? How is Uber — with its half-gigabyte client app updated once or twice weekly for tens of millions of users — not paying for App Store hosting and bandwidth, but indie developers are?
Previously:
- EU App Store Tiers and Core Technology Commission
- WWDC 2025 Keynote
- Court Orders Apple to Comply With Anti-Steering Injunction
- Hearing for Apple Violating Epic’s Injunction
- More App Store Studies
- Apple-Funded Study on Success of Third-Party Apps
- IAP Fees for Event Services
- Another Apple-Funded App Store Study
- Have You Contributed Any Revenue?
- Apple Responds to Spotify
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> How is Uber — with its half-gigabyte client app
Tangential to the post: Half a gig to order a cab is nuts. It’s unreasonable. Then something like DEVONthink is a fifth that size and has features out the wazoo.
@Dangman reminds me of everyone clutching pearls over “vibe coding” and AI assisted coding, lamenting the loss of carefully crafted apps by experts.
Meanwhile all the major apps just crank out garbage bloated with third party libraries and trackers. Apple’s own apps are barebones minimum effort, the Mac apps literally just ports of the iPhone ones.
And then there’s the other recent post about how the scammers are far more successful than the people trying to make positive contributions.
iOS software has become a parody of itself. So few people are actually carefully crafting software with good intentions anymore and it seems they are mostly punished for it. The incentives are all wrong.
