Apple says App Store sales topped $10 billion in 2013

Apple announced on Tuesday that customers spent over $10 billion on the App Store in 2013. The company said that App Store customers spent over $1 billion and downloaded almost three billion apps in December alone, making it the most successful month in App Store history.

Apple also announced that developers have now earned $15 billion during App Store's lifetime. Working backwards from the fact that Apple gives developers a 70 percent share of App Store transactions, that leads us to the fact that Apple customers have spent a little over twenty-one billion dollars on the App Store since its inception.

"We'd like to thank our customers for making 2013 the best year ever for the App Store," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. "The lineup of apps for the holiday season was astonishing and we look forward to seeing what developers create in 2014."

While there were unofficial reports of App Store reaching the one million apps milestone a while back, Apple has now confirmed that over one million apps are now available to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users in 155 countries around the world, with more than 500,000 native iPad apps available, across App Store's 24 categories.

"We'd like to thank our customers for making 2013 the best year ever for the App Store," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services.

Apple used the opportunity to highlight popular apps and developers of the year, saying, "2013 saw surprise hits like Ellen DeGeneres' Heads Up, ProtoGeo's Moves, Simon Filip's Afterlight and Kevin Ng's Impossible Road. Many of the year's biggest successes like Candy Crush Saga, Puzzles & Dragons, Minecraft, QuizUp and Clumsy Ninja were created by international developers."

Looking forward to the next year, Apple named Duolingo (United States), Simogo (Sweden), Frogmind (UK), Plain Vanilla Corp (Iceland), Atypical Games (Romania), Lemonista (China), BASE (Japan) and Savage Interactive (Australia) as developers to watch in 2014.

"The lineup of apps for the holiday season was astonishing and we look forward to seeing what developers create in 2014," Cue added.