‘Half a trillion dollars’ App Store economy, Apple affirms

According to Apple, in 2019 its App Store ecosystem “facilitated half a trillion dollars” of trade. 85% of that number happened through sales from which it did not take commission.

A representative from Apple told the BBC that it was proud of the dealings that it had allowed and fetes the inspection of its App Store, as this posting comes amidst the anti-competition inspection Apple and tech giants are facing.

Industry and amusement.

Boston-based consultancy Analysis Group economist carried out the research, commissioned by Apple.

The research examined deals and billings linked to apps running on the tech firm’s various platforms. This includes:

• in-app advertising via apps such as Twitter and Pinterest
• the sale of physical goods via apps such as Asos and Amazon
• the sale of digital goods and services via apps including Mario Kart Tour and Tinder
• travel bookings via apps such as Uber and British Airways
• food deliveries via apps including Just Eat and Deliveroo
• subscriptions to media apps including the Times newspaper and Netflix
• subscriptions to work apps including Zoom and Slack

Spending that took place externally but ushered to content being used within an app was the venture considered by the survey. Correspondingly, it deducted a part of the billing of in-app sales whose content was utilized or consumed elsewhere.

According to economists, $519bn (£406bn) had been produced through Apple’s software ecosystem in total. The number does include purchased produced by the Android and Windows versions of the similar products. The biggest share of the sum, $413bn, were rated by physical goods and offline services, while  $61bn were rated for digital goods and services – from which Apple usually takes a cut of 30%.

Developer uproar.

According to reports, the research’s findings correspond with a call by the US House Judiciary Committee for tech leaders including Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook to respond to questions about anti-trust concerns.

On Friday, news site Axios said that the committee also arranged to press Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook release internal documents about their digital markets if they did not give them

News site Axios said on Friday that the committee also planned to compel Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook to disclose internal documents about their digital markets if they did not share them deliberately.

Some changes requested for by Omni Group’s Will Shipley were:

• A reduction in Apple’s cut of digital sales from 30% to 20%.
• The right to charge upgrade fees for major changes to software.
• An end to ads in the App Store to prevent search results for a specific item giving prominence to a competitor’s product.

“Apple has a market cap of about $1.5tn and it extracts more margin than any other company from the mobile phone market,” said Ben Wood from the consultancy CCS Insight.

“It’s keen to remind people that it has had to work to build this platform. But now it has become so powerful, it’s unsurprising that people are questioning whether the original terms of engagement are still fair.”

Next week, Apple plans to host its Worldwide Developers Conference. In time with the event, a leading business software developer co-dounder issued its own charges about Apple’s business operations.

 

Source: BBC News