Apple WWDC 2018: App Store yielded $100 billion for app makers
Apple says the 20 million app developers are bringing in big revenues.
- 2022 Eddie Award for a single article in consumer technology
The WWDC 2018 logo outside the event Monday.
The App Store is about to turn 10 years old, and so far, it's paid out some big bucks to software developers.
Revenue for iOS developers is $100 billion so far, said CEO Tim Cook at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California. Apple also has 20 million developers around the world, Cook said, adding that developers from 77 different countries were in the room at the event Monday. Both those numbers were records for Apple.
The App Store has 500 million visitors a week, Cook said. The store has 350 million apps written in the Swift programming language, which Apple debuted at WWDC 2014, available for download.
The operating system that powers all these apps, iOS , is getting a boost in performance in its latest update, said Craig Federigh, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering. Apps running on the new iOS 12 will launch 40 percent faster, the keyboard will launch 50 percent faster and the "swipe to take photo" feature will load 70 percent faster, he said.
Federighi also noted that 81 percent of Apple device users run the latest version of iOS on their iPhones and iPads . The system has a 95 percent satisfaction rate. Cook said that within 7 weeks of iOS 11's release, 70 percent of mobile users had updated their devices to run the software.
In February, Apple said there are 1.3 billion active devices being used globally, an increase of 30 percent in two years. That includes iPhones, iPads, Macs, iPods, Apple TVs and Apple Watches that the company said were engaged in its services over the past 90 days.
While describing the new Shortcut app that works with Apple personal assistant Siri, Federighi said Siri processes 10 billion requests a year.
While introducing WatchOS 5, the operating system that powers the Apple Watch, Cook said the device has seen growth of 60 percent in the past year.
Apple TV will have more than 100 live channels available as it makes a move to replace your cable box.
As of April 22, 76 percent of Apple's mobile devices on the market were running iOS 11, the company's mobile software from late 2017. Another 19 percent used iOS 10, and 5 percent of devices ran an older version, according to the company's developer dashboard. By comparison, only about 5.7 percent of Android devices ran Google's latest software, dubbed Oreo, as of May 7.
See also
WWDC 2018: Here's everything Apple just announced.
iOS 12: Siri shortcuts, group FaceTime and 'Memoji' Animoji of you.