As it turns out, a pandemic that forces people to stay at home is actually good for some businesses. Grocery delivery services like Shipt and Instacart have seen business boom as have companies that make hand sanitizer, toilet paper, and paper towels. Also doing well during the COVID-19 outbreak has been Apple’s App Store. This makes sense since people are working from home and installing the appropriate apps on their iPads. They also are downloading games, streaming content apps, and more on their iPhone and iPod touch units.

Last month showed the strongest growth for the App Store since September 2017

Huberty noted that nine out of the top ten countries in terms of generating App Store revenue had top-line growth in April. These 10 countries account for 90% of the App Store’s revenue and only Australia had slower revenue growth on a sequential basis. In March, Apple announced that the App Store is coming to 20 new countries including Afghanistan, Gabon, Cote d’lvoire, Georgia, Maldives, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cameroon, Iraq, Kosovo, Libya, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nauru, Rwanda, Tonga, Zambia, and Vanuatu.

By focusing on the large number of active iPhone units (approximately 900 million), Apple can collect recurring subscription fees from Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple News+, and Apple TV+ subscribers. And the Services division also includes the App Store, AppleCare+, iCloud and more. While Huberty wrote that, “These results continue to confirm that the app economy is healthy and that the App Store will remain a beneficiary of social distancing and increased mobile engagement,” she also noted that April will be the peak of App Store revenue growth. She comes to that conclusion because several countries are easing up on lockdown restrictions. The analyst says that there is a shot that Apple will exceed her forecast for 18% growth in App Store revenues for June.

As of March, iOS app developers have collected $155 billion from the sale of paid apps and in-app purchases since the App Store opened. Since the Android Market launched (now the Google Play Store of course), developers for the platform have been paid $80 billion. Why the large gap? The theory is that because many there are so many low-priced Android phones that are sold in developing markets, these users don’t have the money to purchase as many apps or make as many in-app purchases as iOS users.