Apple users end 2020 by spending $1.8-bn on apps, most of it on games

Apple Inc. said consumers spent $1.8 billion on the App Store during the last week of 2020, an increase from $1.42 billion in the same period a year earlier with people relying on digital services more than ever to stay connected to work, school and family.

The Cupertino, California-based technology giant said that most of the spending between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve went to games. New Year’s Day set a single-day spending record of $540 million on the App Store, up from $386 million on that day in 2020. Some of the most downloaded apps in 2020 were Zoom and Disney+, Apple said. The company has now paid out a total of $200 billion to developers, up from $155 billion a year ago.

In a statement Wednesday, the iPhone maker also highlighted the performance of a few of its other services, but didn’t share subscriber numbers for some of the most important offerings, including Apple Music and Apple TV+. The company said that its Apple Pay mobile payments offering is now accepted at 90% of U.S. retailers and that Apple Books now has 90 million monthly active users.

Services have become an increasingly key component of Apple’s overall revenue, topping $53 billion in 2020 and accounting for almost 20 per cent of the company’s overall revenue.

The App Store is one of the biggest revenue drivers for Apple’s services segment, but has been criticized by some regulators and developers over the past year for the percentage it takes from app makers. Last month, Apple began a new program that slices the fee for developers to 15% of sales, down from 30%, for those that make $1 million or less in annual App Store revenue.