Apple just shared some staggering statistics about how well the App Store is doing

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• Apple announced new App Store statistics on Thursday.
• It revealed for the first time that over half a billion iPhone and iPad users visit the App Store every week.

Apple has an annual tradition in early January of announcing how well its App Store is doing.

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But instead of simply announcing its yearly sales, or total downloads, or other key stats, it gives investors and users a few seemingly random data points.

Still, Wall Street analysts use these data points to back into an estimation of how big Apple's App Store is, especially as it becomes more important to Apple's services business, which executives have talked up in the past two years.

Apple makes money on the App Store because it takes a 30% cut of software and digital goods sold through it, except for subscriptions. The App Store is the only way for most people to install software on an iPhone.

This year, Apple announced:

• $300 million in purchases on January 1, 2018.
• $890 million in purchases over the week starting December 24, a week that also saw a record number of customers downloading apps.
• iOS developers were paid $26.5 billion in 2017. If that's 30% of Apple's take - an estimation, given new payout rates for subscriptions - the App Store grossed about $88 billion in sales.
• Apple's payout to developers was 30% more than last year.
• 2,000 apps are using Apple's augmented reality software, ARkit.
• Over 500,000,000 people visit the App Store ever week.
• Apple has paid developers over $86 billion since 2008.

Last year, Apple said:

• $240 million in purchases on January 1, 2017.
• $3 billion in purchases in December.
• iOS developers were paid "over $20 billion" in 2016.
• The number of total apps in the iOS App Store was 2.2 million, up 20% from 2015.

You can check out Apple's press release here and its 2016 stats here.

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