Analysis: Apple's App Store grossed an estimated $64B+ in 2020, up 28% from an estimated $50B in 2019 and $48.5B in 2018
- Apple's App Store grossed more than $64 billion in 2020, according to an analysis by CNBC. — That's up from an estimated $50 billion in 2019 and $48.5 billion in 2018 …
Context & Ripple Effects
CNBC's estimate extends a trajectory analysts have been tracking for years: back in early 2018, Asymco projected iOS users spending about $100M/day as the store added roughly $5B/year since mid-2011. The 2020 figure of $64B+ implies that pace roughly quintupled in a single year, a pandemic-era acceleration rather than the old linear climb.
The number also lands between Apple's own ecosystem studies — the store facilitated $519B in commerce in 2019 and, per an Apple-commissioned analysis, ~$643B in billings and sales in 2020 — because those figures include untaxed physical goods and services while CNBC counts gross billings through the store itself. The gap is precisely why the commission slice keeps drawing scrutiny.
First-order effects
- Apple's commission base grows directly with the 28% gross jump — Appfigures later pegged US commission revenue at $4.8B in 2020 rising to $10.1B by 2024 — so every point of this growth compounds Apple's highest-margin revenue line.
Second-order effects
- A larger measured take makes the 30% cut a bigger target: the more regulators and developers can quantify what flows through the store, the more pressure on Apple's take-rate economics — the dynamic behind the $1.1T ecosystem studies Apple commissions to emphasize how much volume (like the $910B in physical goods) escapes its commission entirely.
Third-order effects
- If double-digit growth on a $50B+ base holds while outside estimates keep refining the commission pool, app-store billing becomes a regulated, independently measured market rather than a black box — with the platform take rate the central contested number.
The trend: App Store billings are compounding far faster than their pre-2020 linear path even as independent estimates steadily expose the size of Apple's commission pool to regulators.