When people think of entertainment, they usually think of Hollywood and its primacy in movie and television production. After all, Hollywood is the leading revenue producer among entertainment media, right Not any more, according to Apple analyst Horace Dediu, who compared 2014’s App Store revenue figures from Apple with Hollywood’s 2014 US box office revenues. Apple paid $10 billion to app developers in 2014, while Hollywood’s US box office take for 2014 was roughly the same amount.
Those numbers are diverging rapidly, though. Apple took in $500 million from the App Store in just the first week of 2015, so it’s pretty clear that the total for this year will be much higher than 2014. Meanwhile, Hollywood’s box office grosses have been keeping in a fairly narrow range for the last five years.
The picture isn’t complete for either side, of course. Hollywood makes money overseas from movies, as well as from DVD sales, Blu-ray sales, and licensing revenue to various outlets. Still, it’s also true that the App Store numbers are merely a part of the app economy. “The Apps economy includes Android and ads and service businesses and custom development,” noted Dediu. “Including all revenues, apps are still likely to be bigger than Hollywood.”
The app economy is more than just app revenues, of course. The app economy sustains some 627,00 jobs (based on iOS) in the US, versus 374,000 jobs in Hollywood. And it’s quite probable that the average revenue of app developers is higher than the average revenue of actors.
Some more key stats for the App Store:
- $500 million spent on iOS apps in first week of January 2015
- Billings for apps increased 50 percent in 2014
- Cumulative developer revenues were $25 billion (making 2014 revenues 40 percent of all app sales since store opened in 2008)
- 627,000 jobs created in the US
- 1.4 million iOS apps catalog is sold in 155 countries
