Sweetening The Deal

Apple is giving app developers faster approvals and more data

“We don’t have to worry about waiting a week or two weeks”

- Alex Webb

Apple Inc.’s App Store has made a great many software developers into millionaires since its launch almost a decade ago. But working with the famously controlling company can be pretty frustrating, especially for the app makers who don’t get rich. Apple has typically rejected apps with little explanation or chance for appeal. It’s also been reluctant to give developers any data on how, or how often, iPhone customers are using their apps.

These days, Apple can’t afford to brush off the developer community. Sales of iPhones, iPads, and Macs are slowing, and the company is under pressure to extract more revenue from its services business, which grew 22 per cent last year, to $24 billion. “We expect the revenues to be the size of a Fortune 100 company this year,” Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said during Apple’s latest investor call, in January.

Cook also predicted that the services arm, which includes iTunes and the service warranty program AppleCare, will double in size by 2021. The business’s standout performers are the App Store (yearly revenue up 40 per cent, to $8.6 billion, in 2016) and subscription service Apple Music ($1.6 billion in its first full year), according to estimates by Gene Munster, who runs Loup Ventures and covered Apple as an analyst for years. 

So Apple is starting to make concessions to app makers, cutting them more favourable revenue-sharing deals and doling out more user data. Over the past year the company has introduced software to help analyse app use and revenue generation, sped up the approval process for new apps, halved its take from many App Store trans actions, and made it easier for developers to sell subscriptions.