A survey by the Analysis Group Institute, commissioned by Apple, shows that sales of “young developers” have increased by 113% since 2019. And it is the French who are doing their best.
Let’s be clear, publishing a new positive study on the App Store,
at a time when authorities around the world are questioning the future of the App Store, is by no means a small feat.
A few weeks after it was revealed that iPhone users preferred Spotify over Apple Music and Google Maps over Apple Maps, Apple, through the Institute’s analysis group,
is now revealing numbers on the developer’s micro-economy, May 25, 2022.
Once again, we find the positive From the App Store. The App Store also benefits young developers, despite its 15% or 30% commission.
This type of study is important to Apple, which, thanks to these findings, has what it takes to defend itself against those who want to break its economic model.
What is a junior developer?
To conduct its new study, Apple has devised a new definition, that of “young developer”. Although the brand may have used this expression in the past, it only affected developers with annual revenues of less than $1 million. In his new study, the term no longer refers to the same thing. A Junior Developer should now:
He earned less than $1 million in the year prior to the study.
Less than 1 million downloads in the year prior to the study.
Performed at least 1,000 downloads during the year prior to the study.
They offer a paid or free app with in-app purchases.
This new definition allows Apple to exclude account developers with applets, reserved for example for a company. We also take into account developers who offer purchases directly from their payment engine, making it possible to make the App Store stand out.
The Apple study questions the work of small developers between 2019 and 2021. These years were chosen for a simple reason: one precedes the pandemic, the other accompanies the start of an economic recovery. There are several possible hypotheses then: did the developers lose in sales, achieve turnover or return to the previous level?
This is precisely the surprise of this study, as the income of junior developers increased by 113% on a global scale (even France is the number one country in the world, with an increase of 122%). That’s great, even if we’d like to know more about the distribution of these increases. Either way, Apple’s message is: Developers make a lot of money from the App Store.
How do we explain such progress? Many of the answers were cited in the study, such as the fact that the pandemic has invented new uses (think fitness apps or video software like Zoom for example). Did developers have new ideas during the pandemic, to the point of doubling their income?
