How much is the app economy worth after the pandemic? The forced digitization imposed by the coronavirus has made ecommerce in general and the ecosystem that revolves around the Apple App Store fly in particular. But not only the Cupertino platform has gained. According to the new report by the American Analysis Group, in fact, most of the wealth that has been generated around the iPhones and iPads has ended up in the pockets of developers. The turnover generated by the App Store in 2020 worldwide was 643 billion dollars, up 24% compared to the previous year, and 2.9 billion in our country alone.
The ecosystem of the App Store, which has turned 12 years of life since its debut in 2008, is populated by small and very small companies, that is, companies often composed of one or two programmers who manage to do business by climbing on the shoulders of the giant Apple. More than 90% of the developers present on the store between 2015 and 2019 are in fact classified by Analysis Group as small, that is, a company whose apps have had less than one million downloads and the gain has not exceeded the million dollar threshold. year (excluding, however, hobbyists, that is, those who have not exceeded a thousand downloads). And their number in the five-year period has grown steadily by 40%. During the pandemic, the success of children was the real engine of growth: one in five saw an increase of at least 25% in turnover per year, while one in four sold 25% more of their digital goods and services . The story of most developers is similar: they enter the App Store as “small” independents and grow in the following years. In 2020 almost half of the big ones, 42%, were small in 2015 or even (35%) not there. they were still.
The most important number of the research on the app economy created by the Apple platform, however, is that of the turnover generated by the App Store. Apple, as we learn from the pending lawsuit in the US with Epic, it does not directly calculate the value of its App Store. Created the year after the presentation of the iPhone (2007) to open the smartphone to third-party developers and allow third parties to develop software, the store had one goal: to sell more phones. To get there, Steve Jobs had wanted to remove two obstacles: the first was of a technical nature, that is to make it easier for third parties to produce software. Since then, Apple has constantly worked on the creation of software tools to allow third parties to create apps, has invested in training (such as the Academy for young people who want to become programmers, for example that of Naples) and major events (such as the 32nd edition of the developer conference, which opens again in virtual format next week). The other was to make software distribution simple: the app store eliminated the sale of physical media (CDs in boxes, sold in stores) and put the giants (Microsoft, Adobe) and the very small, perhaps individual programmers on the same level. today they have the opportunity to tread the same stage and obtain the same distribution as the big names in the sector.
Apple has a commission of 30% in the case of direct sales, in app or subscription limited to 15% for the little ones, i.e. their first million euros in turnover and installed apps. The wealth generated by this model is only a part of the total value. In fact, the related activities also include all other transactions: payments made through apps, sales, advertising. All slices of the total value on which Apple does not put a mouth and above all does not collect. And that’s by far the largest chunk, according to Analysis Group, that the pandemic has literally blown: 90% of the $ 643 billion in business was done out of the App Store, with no fees from Apple. In Italy, the turnover is 2.9 billion, with half a billion deriving from the sale of digital goods and services via apps, two billion from the sale of physical goods (the so-called mobile-commerce or M-commerce), and 400 million for advertising.
Analysis Group estimates also cover the other countries where the App Store is present. For Europe, the weight of Apple’s ecosystem turnover is substantial: in Spain it is 2.7 billion, 7.9 for France, 11.2 for Germany and 31.4 for the United Kingdom. Overall, the earnings for developers have almost tripled since 2015. A last relevant metric to understand how the App Store indirectly generates value is given by the acquisitions or listings on the stock exchange of companies born on the app store: since 2011, 75% of app creators have been purchased (for an aggregate value of approximately $ 46 billion) or have gone public, for a total value at launch of $ 459 billion.
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