Apple just announced that apps and games were the bigger part of the holiday season in 2017 as the App Store has hit a record $300 million in purchases on New Year’s Day 2018. During the week of Christmas, a record number of iOS users made purchases from the App Store spending over $890 million in the seven-day period.
Among all the games, Pokemon Go claimed back the top spot on December 21st, thanks to the introduction of new augmented reality AR+ features built on Apple’s ARKit. The Apple App Store currently has over 2000 AR based apps widespread in various categories. The most popular AR titles in the games section include CSR Racing 2, Stack AR and Kings of Pool and in shopping category apps like Amazon and Wayfair topped.
In the education apps including Night Sky and Thomas & Friends Minis; and social media apps including Pitu and Snapchat. The company says that the newly designed App Store introduced in the iOS 11 is making it easy for users to discover more apps and games. iOS developers since the time the App Store launched in July 2008, have earned over $86 billion.
Commenting on the same, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing said:
We are thrilled with the reaction to the new App Store and to see so many customers discovering and enjoying new apps and games. We want to thank all of the creative app developers who have made these great apps and helped to change people’s lives. In 2017 alone, iOS developers earned $26.5 billion — more than a 30 percent increase over 2016.