iKnow: 12 essential stats on the world of Apple

One billion iPhones and $50 billion paid out to developers. The landmark numbers keep on coming from Apple. Here are 20 key stats you should know about the world’s biggest tech hardware maker…

Last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook confirmed that app developers had earned over $50 billion across the eight year history of the iTunes App Store.

It’s a pretty remarkable milestone given that Steve Jobs was initially against the idea of native apps. Reports say he favoured developers sticking with coding apps inside the web browser.

Today, the app reigns. It’s become the de facto way of finding information on a smartphone. In so doing it’s changed the dynamics of the industry.

And it has made Apple a services company as well as one that makes money from selling hardware.

Shortly before Tim Cook revealed the app store milestone, Apple announced its third quarter results. So let’s take a look at key performance data of the world’s largest (occasionally second largest) tech company.

Apple sold its billionth iPhone in July 2016
Apple has paid out $50m to app store developers
It took just over seven months for Apple to pay out the last $10 billion to developers
iPhone shipments of 40.4 million in Q3 were down 15 per cent year-on-year
Apple shipped 10 million iPads in Q3
Apple reported a profit of $7.8 billion, down 27 per cent, on revenue of $42.4 billion
Services revenue in Q3 hit $6 billion – up 19 per cent year-on-year
Apple sold 4.3 million Macs in Q3, generating revenue of $5.2bn
There were 5,000 active apps on the App Store at the end of 2008, and 1.75 million by 2015. This figure will grow to 2.93 million by the end of 2016.
Consumers have downloaded 130bn iOS apps since the app store launched
There are now 13 million registered developers building for Apple platforms
Analysts Sensor Tower believes Apple’s App Store is set for more growth. It says it will be home to more than five million active apps by the end of 2020. That’s 73 per cent larger than today.
48,231 new apps were released in May. One in four were games (nearly 21,000). The rest were Education (2,472 new apps), Entertainment (2,378), Business (2,247), and Lifestyle (2,225).
IDC said Apple Watch sales fell 55 per cent year-over-year in Q2, to 1.6 million from 3.6 million.
Apple Watch had more than 17,000 apps by April 2016, according to App Annie.
There are 10 billion documents in iCloud Drive.
The streaming service Apple Music has 15 million paid subscribers.
Apple sold $25 billion in devices and services to enterprise customers in the last year. That’s 11 percent of overall revenue.
Apple has around 26 per cent of the global tablet market.
In April 2016, Apple announced its first quarterly sales decline in 13 years – from $58bn to $50.6bn.