After having to admit it's been slowing down older iPhones---and now facing lawsuits over these actions---one would image that December wasn't the best month for Apple. But Cupertino will no doubt take solace in the fact that the App Store and its contents brought in a record amount of money during the close of the holiday period.
From December 24 to December 31, customers spent $890 million through in-app purchases or downloading apps from Apple's store. This culminated in a record 300 million dollars' worth of purchases on New Year's Day 2018. Apple takes a 15 percent cut of all App Store sales.
"We are thrilled with the reaction to the new App Store and to see so many customers discovering and enjoying new apps and games," said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing.
2017 was a good year for iOS app developers, too. Their creations brought in revenue of $26.5 billion, which marked a 30 percent increase over 2016. Since the App Store first arrived in June 2008, devs have made over $86 billion from sales of their software.
Apple hints that some of the App Store's record sales over Christmas were partly due its redesign and new technology like the ARKit framework. It notes that Pokemon Go, which relaunched with new AR features at the end of the year, had retaken the top spot in the charts. The company pointed out that Pokemon Go was just one of almost "2,000 ARKit-enabled apps spanning every category on the App Store."