Apple has paid out $9 billion to developers; App Store downloads reach 45 billion
Apple's earnings conference calls are typically brimming with interesting tidbits regarding Apple's operations, and Tuesday's was no different. Apple announced that it has, to date, paid out more than $9 billion to developers.
To put that figure into context, let's take a quick look at just how much Apple's payments to developers have risen since the App Store first opened.
Tim Cook noted in February that Apple had paid out $8 billion to developers. In June 2012, Apple announced that they had paid developers $5 billion. Going back further, Apple's first $1 billion payout to developers was reached in June 2010.
Seeing as the the App Store first opened in July 2008, we can do a little bit of basic math to track the growth of developer payouts.
It took Apple nearly two years to reach its first $1 billion payout. The next two years saw Apple increase its payout to developers by $4 billion. And now, in the last 9 months, Apple has added another $4 billion in payments to developers.
Touting this fact, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer noted during the conference call that Apple is now dishing out more than $1 billion to developers each quarter.
Clearly, Apple's payouts to developers aren't just increasing, they're accelerating. Of course, this is to be expected given the proliferation of millions more iOS devices each and every quarter. Still, $9 billion is nothing to scoff at and serves to underscore the attractiveness of Apple's App Store for developers.
With respect to App Store downloads, Apple announced that it has crossed the 45 billion download threshold. The last time Apple released download details was in January when it announced that the App Store had topped more than 40 billion downloads.
Apple's App Store is available in 155 countries and houses 850,000 iOS apps. As of June 2012, there were 650,000 iOS apps available for download. A million apps can't be that far off.
