How much did people spend in Apple’s App Store at Christmas?

2019 was the year of the app. Apple has released the numbers on its App Store sales between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, and, wow. Ringing in at $1.42 billion, the grand total represents a 16 percent increase from the same period the previous year. And on New Year’s Day, people made $386 million worth of App Store purchases, setting a new record for single-day purchases on the service.

Additionally, Apple reported that one quarter of everything that app developers have earned through the App Store since it was created in 2008 came from 2019. That’s one quarter of $155 billion. 

For paid apps, the top three downloaded in 2019 were Facetune, HotSchedules and Dark Sky Weather. On the free side of things social media apps dominated the downloads, with apps like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok coming out on top. The most-downloaded paid gaming app was Minecraft, while the most-downloaded free gaming app was Mario Kart Tour.