A recently released estimate claims that in 2024, developer billings and sales in India totaled an astounding ₹44,447 crore, or around $5.31 billion, driven by Apple’s App Store. Remarkably, around 94% of this revenue bypassed Apple’s commission system and went straight to developers and companies.
Viswanath Pingali, a professor at IIM Ahmedabad, put together the results, which demonstrate how the App Store has grown to be a major development engine for Indian developers. It draws attention to their growing profits, their accomplishments in expanding their audience internationally, and their promotion of entrepreneurship across the nation. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, complimented the Indian app ecosystem and called its growth “miraculous.”
“For developers in India and around the world, the App Store has been an economic miracle, and we’re thrilled to support their work,” Cook said. The strength of India’s extraordinarily thriving app industry is shown by this report. Additionally, we’re determined to continue funding developers of all sizes to ensure their success.
According to the 2024 profits breakdown, the sale of tangible products and services brought in ₹38,906 crore (about $4.65 billion) for Indian developers. The survey found that although sales of digital products and services brought in ₹2,527 crore (about $302 million), in-app advertising brought in ₹3,014 crore (around $352.9 million).
The growing worldwide presence of Indian coders is one trend that is very significant. Users outside of India accounted for around 80% of their entire revenue. Over 755 million apps created in India were downloaded globally in 2024, which is twice as many as there were five years before. Many of these apps even made it into the top 100 lists on 70 various foreign stores.
Over the last five years, Indian consumers have tripled their app downloads, and their app expenditure has more than quadrupled. Indian developers have played a key role in producing popular applications in the travel, gaming, entertainment, gig economy, food delivery, and rapid commerce industries.
The expansion of smaller developers is also booming. Due in large part to programs like Apple’s App Store Small Business Program, which lowers commission costs for small developers, allowing them more space to expand and thrive, their revenues increased by 74% between 2021 and 2024.
Apple’s attempts to uphold strict security and privacy standards across its App Store are also discussed in the study. According to reports, Apple stopped more than $7 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions between 2020 and 2023, including $1.8 billion in 2023 alone. Over 1.7 million app applications were turned down during this time because they didn’t adhere to Apple’s stringent privacy, security, and quality standards.
These encouraging changes, however, coincide with heightened regulatory pressure on Apple, especially in the EU. Recently, Apple was fined €500 million (about $540 million) by the EU for allegedly preventing developers from referring consumers to payment options other than the App Store. According to the European Commission, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to guarantee equitable digital market practices, is broken by this practice and impedes competition.
The current results highlight the App Store’s continued importance for developers in spite of these legislative obstacles, especially in developing nations like India where chances for innovation and expansion are growing quickly.
