Apple has paid over $2 billion to app developers

Apple has paid over $2 billion to app developers, while its users have downloaded more than 60 apps for every iOS device sold, according to two new reports published by Asymco, a market intelligence firm. The first one, which also says Apple has paid $12 billion to record labels, makes a few key assumptions:

• Average selling price per app $0.29
• Price per song $0.99 increasing to $1.05 over time
• Music gross margin 10 percent
• App gross margin 30 percent

Although music suppliers have received much more in total from Apple than developers have, Cupertino has been serving music for much longer. Taking this into account, the App Store paid out $2 billion in 31 months while iTunes paid first $2 billion for music in 34 months. The chart below shows the accumulated payments made to suppliers of content to the iTunes store:

The second report focuses on apps. The App Store is about to reach 10 billion downloads, and if it happens this month, it will have been in less than half the time iTunes took to sell 10 billion songs (31 versus 67 months). Apps from the store are being downloaded over 30 million times per day, and the figure is growing. Not only are downloads increasing, but the rate of increase is increasing.