Pokemon Go leads the App Store to a record setting July

Apple CEO Tim Cook announced yesterday that July was a record breaking month for the App Store. The highest ever total of monthly billings were posted, and a record amount of money was paid out to developers. Cook sent out a tweet on Wednesday stating that iOS developers have now been paid a total of $50 billion since the launch of the App Store back on July 10th, 2008.

July's record breaking activity might have been fueled by the July 5th launch of Pokemon Go. While the game is free, there are in-app purchases available, and Apple gets a 30% cut of those sales. Last month, Apple already announced that Pokemon Go had set a record for the most downloads of a new app during its first week of availability.

On Wednesday, Needham analysts pulled out their abacuses and computed that Pokemon Go could add as much as $3 billion to Apple's revenue in the next year or two. To reach this conclusion, the securities firm used an estimate made public by Sensor Tower last month that Pokemon Go was creating $1.6 million of in-app purchases daily.

Needham computes that everyday, the average Pokemon Go player on iOS is creating 16 cents in income from which Apple gets 30%, or about 5 cents. The firm says that this works out to $3 billion in revenue for Apple over the next 12 to 24 months. While  Needham's math is way too optimistic, the point is that Apple is going to be seeing some decent money flowing into its coffers from Pokemon Go without lifting a finger.
 
source: @tim_cook, BusinessInsider