Spotlight on small businesses and app developers on the App Store

The report reflects the role and value of small businesses and small development teams in the App Store system: more than 90% of developers on the App Store are small development teams, and thousands of such developers join every year; in the past two years, the revenue of small development teams has increased by 113% worldwide, which is significantly faster than that of large developers.

The beginning of Apple ecosystem

The general view in the industry is that Apple reinvented the smartphone, but in fact, what is more important to more people is that the emergence of the App Store in 2008 made the smartphone complete. Since then, hardware + software has become a main line for Apple.

According to public data: On March 6, 2008, the App Store was launched, and Apple released the iPhone Application Development Kit (SDK) to facilitate third-party developers to develop applications for the iPhone. On July 14, there were 800 applications available for download in the App Store, with a download volume of 10 million times. On January 16, 2009, there were 15,000 applications with over 500 million downloads.

The emergence of App Store not only makes the iPhone omnipotent, but also creates a new software production and business model.

According to Sina Digital, the total number of developers in Greater China currently exceeds 5 million, an increase of more than 13% compared to 4.4 million in the same period last year, achieving double-digit growth in one year. This also shows the development speed of the domestic developer community.

Focus on small development teams

These figures are inseparable from the contributions of small development teams and individual developers. It is also because of Apple's continuous maintenance of this system that the previously fragmented software industry has a mature business model of centralized sales, unified acquisition, and unified feedback to developers.

Today's data report from Analysis Intelligence further demonstrates the role of small businesses and small development teams with data, and also shows from another perspective that Apple pays attention to this group (most of whom are entrepreneurs).

The report defines "small businesses and small development teams" as those with no more than 1 million downloads and no more than $1 million in revenue in a single year. The data sample excludes developers with less than 1,000 downloads in a single year from 2015 to 2021, as well as development teams with revenue exceeding $10 million in any 12-month span during this period, to ensure the accuracy of "small development teams".

According to this statistical method, small development teams currently account for over 90% of the entire App Store, and have undoubtedly become the main force.

And the performance in China is even more outstanding, as reflected in the following three points in this report:

1) From 2015 to 2021, the number of small development teams increased by more than 50% worldwide. In the Chinese market, the number of small development teams increased by more than 79%, ranking first in the world. The second is South Korea (69%), and the third is the United Kingdom (41%).

2) In 2021, small development teams joined the App Store from all over the world, of which about 24% came from Europe, 23% from China, 14% from the United States, 4.3% from Japan, and 34% from other regions such as South Korea, India, and Brazil. And the number of small developers joining the App Store continues to grow.

3) From 2019 to 2021, the revenue of small development teams increased by 113% worldwide, among which the top five countries were France, the United States, South Korea, Germany and China.

4) In 2021, among the teams that sold digital products and services through the App Store for more than $1 million, 40% of development teams worldwide have never released a work on the App Store, or their revenue five years ago was less than $10,000. In China, this proportion is even higher, about 50% - this means that the App Store has helped more developers start from scratch and cross the $1 million threshold.