Apple: App Store customers spent $890M Christmas week

However, Apple is the one pulling in the most revenue, the report found – at almost double that of Google Play.

Thanks to security researchers at Trend Micro who reported the set of malicious apps to Google, all these apps no longer exist on the Play Store but it is possible that there could be similar apps lurking around on official app stores because of the way their creators are masking their activities. There are so many options, especially at the Google Play store.

Users spent almost $60 billion on apps in 2017-up roughly 35% from 2016. For calendar 2016, Apple disclosed that developers earned more than $20 billion – up more than 40% year over year – putting gross billings at about $29 billion. Sensor Tower’s report looks at estimated gross spending before Apple’s cut, and its findings fall within 1 percent of the actual figure. That seems to indicate that a large portion of the increase in revenue is coming from emerging markets. But Apple didn’t offer a breakdown as to how the revenue was generated or where.

While it’s unknown as to why the attackers are collecting this information, it remains a huge breach of user privacy – especially given how the victim has downloaded the app in order to protect themselves from attackers, not play into their hands. Since the App Store first arrived in June 2008, devs have made over $86 billion from sales of their software.

“Many users are still unaware of the dangers lurking for them, and continue to install apps such as fishy flashlights, putting them at risk of making their winter months even darker”.

Hundreds of popular Android apps covertly leave the phone’s microphone switched on – listening to users as they watch TV and film.

If Apple collected over $11 billion in App Store revenue in 2017 (not including many of its other services offerings), while digital content purchases and subscriptions are growing at 30%, that 2020 target is starting to look awfully realistic. It’s not clear how many people may have been affected before Google was informed and then removed them from the Google Play lineup.