Apple says App Store users spent $1.8B on goods and services between December 24 and New Year's Eve and $540M on New Year's Day alone; Books has 90M MAUs
9to5MacChance Miller
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's January holiday-spend announcement has become an annual ritual with a clean comparable series: $240M on New Year's Day 2017 grew to $300M in 2018, then $386M in 2020, and now $540M — with the Dec. 24–31 window jumping from $1.42B last year to $1.8B this year despite the pandemic-era shift to digital spending.
Developers and publishers selling through the App Store captured a record holiday window — $540M in a single day, up roughly 40% from the prior year's $386M — concentrated in digital goods and services during lockdown conditions.
Second-order effects
A bigger transacting base strengthens Apple's argument that the App Store is primarily a commerce channel rather than an app-tax collector, giving it more leverage in commission debates and justifying its plan to expand ads in search results in 2026.
Third-order effects
If Apple keeps widening what it measures — single-day records, then MAU counts for individual services like Books, then trillion-dollar ecosystem totals — its Services narrative consolidates around total economic activity routed through the platform, not Apple's own take rate.
The trend: Apple's annual holiday disclosures are evolving from app-sales milestones into a yearly scoreboard of total consumer commerce flowing through its ecosystem.
This year, Arcade dropped significantly in the order services were covered in the press release. Apple Pay got bumped up the list and the Apple Card was a no-show. Books, which was absent in 2019, showed up for the 2020 recap too, just ahead of Podcasts.
I wouldn't read too much into it, but I find it interesting to compare the order in which services are discussed from one year to another in Apple's services press release. No doubt driven by which got the biggest updates, but also which are viewed by Apple as as most important.
App developer payment rate now at $45 billion/yr and gross iOS app spending approaching $180 million/day. Both are increasing in predictable ways (roughly quadrupling every 5 years). https://twitter.com/...
Apple's App Store is also crushing it. Company reported App Store spending growth from Christmas Eve to New Year's Eve was up 27% y/y, an acceleration from up 16% y/y in 2019.
Apple's new-year services momentum brag announcement includes a picture of someone buying a $200 mortar and pestle on an iPad using Apple Pay https://www.apple.com/... https://twitter.com/...