On June 5, Apple cited a latest research report saying that in 2024, AppStore achieved $1.3 trillion in developer turnover and sales.
This report comes from Andrey Fradkin, an economist at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, and Jessica Burley, an economist at Analysis Consulting International. It mainly covers three topics. In addition to the overall revenue performance of the AppStore in 2024, it also involves the growth changes of the ecosystem in the past five years, as well as the development of different regions during this period.
The report presents the most concerned set of data for the AppStore, that is, more than 90% of the above $1.3 trillion in revenue does not require any commission to Apple and belongs entirely to developers.
It should be pointed out that all the above turnover and sales include three major sectors: digital goods and services, physical goods and services, and in-app advertising. The corresponding revenues of the three are $131 billion, $1.01 trillion, and $150 billion, accounting for 10.11%, 78.3%, and 11.58% respectively.
According to Apple’s rules for collecting commissions, the platform usually only collects commissions for digital goods and services, which is about 10%. It generally includes virtual items purchased in apps (such as game skins and coins), subscription services (music, video, fitness), and digital content sales (such as online courses).
Apple may hope to use this to illustrate the contribution of the AppStore to developers and even the world economy, in order to alleviate the accusations and concerns about the “Apple tax” that have always been raised by the outside world.
“Apple tax” refers to a commission that Apple collects from developers’ in-app digital goods and service revenues. The commission rate is usually 15%-30%, depending on the developer’s annual income scale, the nature of its services, cooperation projects, subscription duration and other factors.
Starting from the dispute over Epic Games’ “Fortnite”, Apple’s disputes and lawsuits involving “Apple tax” have never stopped in the past five years, and once intensified in the middle.
Not only large developers such as Epic Games and Spotify, but also governments and regulatory agencies in many countries and regions such as the European Union, the United States, Japan, South Korea, and the Netherlands have gradually participated in the boycott of the “Apple Tax”.
The boycott is usually based on “anti-monopoly” as the reason. The accuser believes that Apple has restricted the payment methods of developers by virtue of its monopoly position and forced commissions, which may not meet the definition of free competition.
Apple’s opposition to this is also very tough. The company previously stated in a remote dialogue with Spotify that the channels, ecology and tools created by the AppStore provide convenience for developers to release products, attract traffic and make profits. Spotify has become a beneficiary of Apple in the process of market scale and product monetization, but does not want to pay Apple any fees other than developer projects.
An image processing software developer told the Jiemian News reporter that as a small and medium-sized developer, he does not think that the “Apple Tax” is unreasonable, because the small and medium-sized developer group does benefit from the development tools, review processes, payment tools provided by Apple, and the recommendation mechanism of the AppStore in acquiring users and business closed loops.
The reason for the difference in mentality between these small and medium-sized developers and large developers may be the huge gap in the amount of benefits they share. This is a long-term demand that Apple has to face from the perspective of commercial interests. From the perspective of legal supervision, Apple obviously still has a long way to go to prove itself in the face of local governments and institutions.
However, since Apple may make targeted adjustments to the commission rules in response to regulatory requirements, such as allowing external paid links in some forms (such as reader apps) or lowering the maximum commission ratio, this may cause countries and regions that do not have preferential rates to participate in this negotiation.
In any case, the above report does show that Apple AppStore, as one of the largest digital transaction carriers, provides many possibilities for economic growth and presents the trend trajectory of various sub-industries in the consumer field.
The report shows that the developer turnover and sales achieved by AppStore throughout the year increased from US$514 billion in 2019 to US$1.3 trillion in 2024.
Among them, digital goods and services revenue increased from US$63 billion to US$131 billion, physical goods and services revenue increased from US$396 billion to US$1.01 trillion, and in-app advertising revenue increased from US$65 billion to US$150 billion.
The report mentioned that the growth of physical goods and services was the strongest, reaching 2.6 times, which was mainly due to the substantial increase in food delivery and self-collection and daily necessities consumption.
From a regional perspective, the data can also provide some judgments. From 2019 to 2024, China, the United States, and Europe achieved 2.3 times, 2.8 times, and 2.9 times growth in AppStore turnover and sales, respectively.
However, according to the data in 2024, China still contributed the most revenue with US$539 billion, followed by the United States and Europe, which contributed US$406 billion and US$148 billion, respectively.
Source: iPhone 17
