Indian Developers Earn ₹44,447 Cr via Apple App Store 2024

The Apple App Store is almost a goldmine for Indian developers. In Billings and sales alone, it contributed to the staggering sum of ₹44,447 crores in 2024. Professor Viswanath Pingali from the IIM, Ahmedabad, illustrates how immensely powerful the App Store has become for India’s fledgling digital economy.

Interestingly, though this sketchy fact may not resonate with coiners, over 94% of the earnings went to developers directly with Apple taking no commission!

How Apps are Changing India’s Economy:

This report showed that app usage surged in India across food delivery, travel, gaming, entertainment, and much more. In the year 2024:

App consumption produced ₹38,906 crores in the sale of physical goods and services.
Another ₹3,014 crores came from in-app advertising.
₹2,527 crores came from selling digital goods and services.
It appears that apps are now no longer for pure entertainment; with them, real businesses have now been enabled.

📌 More than 94% of the Rs 44,447 crore accrued directly to #developers and #businesses of all sizes without any commission to @Apple. pic.twitter.com/9kg21D2yiw
— ETtech (@ETtech) April 28, 2025

Becoming Global: Indian App:

Indian developers are also making quite a name for themselves on the international front. Close to 80% of their App Store revenues were sourced from users outside India in the year 2024. Indian apps were downloaded more than 755 million times worldwide – which is double the volume compared to five years ago! The apps also made it to the list of Top 100 downloads in 70 different countries.

Small Developers Winning Big:

It is not just the big names that are benefiting. Between 2021 and 2024, small developers in India have registered a massive 74% increase in earnings from the App Store. Initiatives like the Small Business Program by Apple, which offers lower commission rates to small developers, empower more independent creators to now realize success.

Apple’s Positive Intention Towards India:

Apple’s plans don’t end there. They are investing a lot of funding into India’s developer community through initiatives like the Apple Developer Center in Bengaluru. Here, engineers and developers collaborate to enable developers’ mastery of powerful technologies like SwiftUI, HealthKit, Metal, and Core ML.Apple is committed to keeping the App Store secure. Between 2020 and 2023, the company estimated that it blocked between $7 billion and $1.8 billion worth of fraudulent transactions—$1.8 billion in 2023 alone. Additionally, it rejected more than 1.7 million apps that did not comply with its stringent privacy, security, or quality requirements.