Apple’s App Store can be a sea of opportunities for many people all over the world. According to a study released in June, the store facilitated $643 billion in billings and sales during 2020, a 24 percent year-over-year increase.
Although there have been a lot of controversies on the App Store recently, there is still good news about it. A Sensor Tower projection reveals that the number of publishers seeing their first $1 million or more in annual net income this year has nearly doubled since 2016.
Nearly 1,000 app publishers earned over a million dollars for the first time in 2021, with the App Store home for most of them, as Sensor Tower projects 581 publishers reaching or exceeding this net revenue.
Although the numbers aren’t as high as they were in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, App Store publishers have more facility to reach this $1M net revenue than on the Google Play Store
While consumer spending has continued to see positive growth, the number of publishers surpassing the $1 million net income milestone for the first time this year is expected to decline year-over-year in 2021. This is likely due the result of consumer behavior continuing to normalize in the wake of an outsized year for new app downloads in 2020. Based on our install estimates, consumers experimented with fewer new apps this year than last, which saw adoption driven to staggering levels at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The App Store saw 636 publishers reach or exceed $1 million in annual net revenue for the first time in 2020, a figure that will decline by nearly 9 percent in 2021. Google Play had 367 publishers cross that milestone last year, placing this year’s total 11 percent below that figure.
According to Sensor Tower projection, productivity app publishers are reaching new heights on iOS in 2021. Although mobile gamers publishers “have historically represented the largest share of earning first-time million-dollars on the App Store” with around 30% of all developers, followed by social network and entertainment, the productivity section jumped from 3% to 6% from 2020 to 2021.
Last year, 21 publishers in the Productivity category reached the $1 million net revenue milestone for the first time, representing about 3.3 percent of all to do so. This figure will climb to 34 this year, accounting for nearly 6 percent. (…) Returning to Games, the category’s share has diminished 31 points since 2016 when it represented close to 63 percent of first-time million-dollar publishers on iOS. This is partly due to the addition of new categories over time, as well as the increased success of publishers in non-game categories.
It’s also important to note that while developers reaching new heights is always great, it also means that they’ll have to pay more App Store fees, as they are out of the Small Business Developer Program launched by Apple. With that, they need to pay 30% to Apple instead of only 15% of all their sales on the App Store.
You can read the full projection of Sensor Tower here.
Related:
- Apple will let developers redirect users to sign up for services outside the App Store
- Here’s how to check if you are eligible for Apple’s Small Developer Assistance Fund
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