Apple’s recent App Store sales figures are helping to counter some of the recent negativity around the company’s iPhone sales figures in China. In addition to reaching new heights for customer transactions, the company has also seen record growth in China.
In July, Apple recorded its most significant figures with $1.7 billion in billings. The company also broke its records in China with its largest number of transactions there to date.
The role China is playing in the app development sphere is particularly interesting. In April, China became the largest downloader of apps from the App Store, surpassing the US in doing so. This growth can mainly be ascribed to increasing iOS sales in China and the increase in iPhone sales overall. China’s preference for doing most tasks on large-screen mobile devices as opposed to using a traditional PC means that Apple has benefitted greatly from the larger iPhone 6 series.
The results are not just related to hardware sales and app downloads. In the second quarter of 2015, iOS maintained a larger amount of revenue than close rival Google Play, even though Google managed 85 per cent higher downloads than iOS. This can be attributed to greater revenue from the apps themselves and the strong performance of apps that were previously downloaded.
Fabien-Pierre Nicolas, VP of Marketing, Communications, and Community at App Annie, explained: “Apple’s strong monetization growth in July is consistent with the overall trend of iOS as the leading platform for monetization in most markets.”
He added: “China, already the No. 1 iOS market in downloads since March, is leading the charge on the growth side.”
Much of the revenue growth has been dominated by video streaming apps. Platforms such as Youku, iQlYl and Tencent Video contributed “explosive” revenue growth in the second quarter.
For example, App Annie reported that iQlYl announced it had achieved 5 million paying subscribers, which represents a 765 per cent increase from last year.
China is rising in terms of downloads and closing in on the top two markets for revenue at the same time. The US and Japan are still the largest markets for revenue, but the Chinese market is catching up quickly.