Apple Inc. has set a new record in sales on its App Store. iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users spent half a billion dollars in the first week of 2015, with New Year’s Day ranking as the single biggest day in the App Store’s sales history.

“This year is off to a tremendous start after a record-breaking year for the App Store and our developer community,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet software and services.

This is not the only big news for Apple. They also enjoyed a 50 percent increase in sales for 2014, with iOS developers receiving more than $10 billion in revenue. To date, App Store developers have earned $25 billion, an increase of $5 billion on previous figures released in July.

“We’re so proud of the creativity and innovation developers bring to the apps they create for iOS users and that the developer community has now earned over $25 billion,” said Cue.

Apple has identified a number of reasons, which could explain the 2014 figures, as well as the astounding figures for the first week of 2015:

• The launch of Apple Pay, where in addition to buying physical goods in-store, customers can also buy App Store content.
• App Bundles allows customers to save money when they buy up to 10 apps in one purchase.
• App previews, which are video demos of an app, were introduced.
• A new programming language, called Swift, was introduced with iOS 8, which is more user friendly.
• iOS 8 also saw the introduction of HealthKit and HomeKit.

Developers are likely to take further advantage of the iOS 8 features as the adoption rate increases from its current 68 percent.

Although Android, Google Inc’s mobile operating system, dominates the market, developers prefer Apple iOS, as their users spend more money on games and apps.

Since App Store sales were $10 billion in 2013, a 50 percent increase equates to an estimated $15 billion in app sales for 2014. Apple receives 30 cents for every dollar spent on the App Store, putting their estimated 2014 earnings from apps at $4.5 billion.

photo credit: miguel77 via photopin cc