App Store, small developer revenue grew 64% in the past two years. An independent study conducted by economists at Analysis Group finds that small developers active on the App Store have experienced an increase in turnover and customer base around the world, with growth even higher than that of large developers.
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Small developers (i.e. those with annual revenues of less than $1 million and fewer than 1 million downloads) increased their revenue by 71 percent between 2020 and 2022. In Europe, their revenues soared by 64%, with significant turnover growth rates in France (122 per cent), the United Kingdom (58 per cent) and Germany (37 per cent).
Small developers (which make up more than 90% of developers on the App Store) reported (PDF) revenue growth across all app categories; in particular, revenues from health, fitness, sports and lifestyle apps have more than doubled in the last two years.
In 2022, nearly 80 percent of small development companies were active in multiple App Stores, and about 40 percent of their total app downloads were from users in other countries. The study also finds that apps that sell digital goods and services across multiple App Stores report revenue from transactions that occur on average across more than 40 stores.
Many developers who made more than $1 million selling digital goods and services on the App Store in 2022 were formerly small development businesses. Just five years ago, 40% of these global businesses were not on the App Store or were making less than $10,000.
In 2022, thousands of new developers started operating on the App Store. Of this group, about 25% came from Europe, 23% from China, 14% from the United States, 4% from Japan and 35% from other countries, including South Korea, India and Brazil.
At the beginning of the month, our Competition and Market Authority launched an investigation against Apple “to ascertain the existence of an alleged abuse of a dominant position in the market for platforms for the online distribution of apps for users of the iOS operating system ”.
