Apple just announced that within the two-week period around Christmas, people spent over $1.1 billion in the Apple App Store. On January 1, customers ended up spending over $144 million on in-app purchases and apps.
The Apple App Store has always been a pretty booming business, but the two-day holiday week proved to be huge for Apple. In fact, sales were so good that Apple said that $1.1 billion is an all-time high for the holiday sales.
Google on the other hand, never really talks publicly about sales or figures. This means that it is hard to tell whether Apple won the App Store wars for the two-week holiday timeframe. It is assumed at this point that Apple did win the holiday sales due to there being a ton of apps on the App Store and so many devices that the App Store is linked to. We will see if Google releases their sales for the holiday season but it is unlikely to happen.
Developers often times spend hours upon hours trying to come up with interesting and useful apps for consumers on the Apple App Store. With $1.1 billion being spent in the App Store during the holiday break, you have to wonder how much of that was people getting new Apple devices for Christmas.
Beyond getting new devices for Christmas, a lot of people also get gift cards for iTunes during the holidays as well. The Apple App Store gift cards come in a variety of numerical values often between $10 and $100. These gift cards can be used to purchase any number of items including songs, podcasts, movies, and books.
Often times the hottest apps within Apple’s App Store are not even made from Apple. The issue with the Apple App Store is that so many companies and developers are turning to the App Store to bring in money. This means that it is harder for many developers to get their apps to stand out in the Apple App Store.
Apple did say that the most popular categories where people are going to download apps and spend money include social networking, gaming, and entertainment. Gaming is often the hottest place for in-app purchases because many games, free and paid, have in-game items to improve your gameplay.