Spitting in the face of naysayers, Apple has announced its first quarter earnings for this year. Not surprisingly, iTunes is one of the biggest earners for Apple with $2.4 billion in revenue being generated by media sales in Q2, AppleInsider reports. That’s a 28 percent increase from last year at the same time. With apps and services bundled in, the total rose over $4 billion. Research showed that the iOS App Store made up 74 percent of total app sales across mobile platforms.
It certainly helps that iTunes continues to support high quality apps and attract innovative, ambitious designers. The store is constantly growing and Apple also revealed the store now offers more than 850,000 iOS applications with 350,000 of those being designed to shine on the iPad.
As far as earnings are concerned, iTunes’ reputation as a breadwinner can be traced back to the diversity of its selection – both in where it’s accessible and what it carries. Apple says the app store covers more than 90 percent of the world population by being available in 155 countries. The broader iTunes store carries 1.7 million iBooks, 60,000 movies in 109 countries, and 35 million songs in 119 countries.
And tossed in as a tidbit for curious developers, over $9 billion has been paid out to app developers on iOS since the store launched back in 2008. With these numbers in front of us, it is all too clear why smaller platforms like Windows Phone are basically ignored.
