One day after lowering its revenue guidance to investors for the first quarter of FY 2019, Apple announced record-breaking sales for its App Store during the holiday week.
App Store customers worldwide set spending records during the holiday week, marking a strong finish for the App Store, which also recorded a sales record for the entire year. Sales at the App Store totalled $1.22bn (£970m) from Christmas Eve through New Year’s Eve, and sales of more than $322m (£255m) on New Year’s Day set a new one-day record.
“The App Store had a record-breaking holiday week and New Year’s Day. The holiday week was our biggest week ever with more than $1.22 billion spent on apps and games, and New Year’s Day set a new single-day record at more than $322 million,” said Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller. “Thanks to the inspiring work of our talented developers and the support of our incredible customers around the world, the App Store finished off an outstanding 2018 and kicked off 2019 with a bang.”
Apple had announced on the previous day that App Store sales had contributed to a new record for company-wide services revenue during the holiday quarter. Services revenue for the company set new records in several categories, including the App Store, Apple Pay, Cloud Services, Apple Music and the App Store’s Search Ads service.
During the holiday week, the most popular categories for subscriptions and app downloads were self-care and gaming. Among the most downloaded games worldwide during the holidays were multiplayer games, including PUBG and Fortnite. Also popular were Monster Strike, Asphalt 9 and Brawl Stars.
At the start of 2019, health and fitness, productivity, and education apps were garnering a lot of attention from customers, with Sweat, 1Password and Lumosity being the most popular in their respective categories.