Forget Hollywood Blockbusters: The Real Money’s in Mobile Apps
Hollywood is not the biggest cash cow in the pasture anymore. Now, software development has become an even more massive money-making machine, as Apple reported earlier this month that iOS developers raked in over $10 billion from consumers in 2014. Adding to the 30% that Apple itself makes from purchases on the App Store, you get a rough total of $14.3 billion. Stack this up against the $10.3 billion Hollywood made from 690 films in 2014 (according to Box Office Mojo), and it’s an eye-raising number, indeed.
Comparing the numbers side-by-side highlights how steady Hollywood business has been…and just how extraordinarily mobile app business has grown. When you consider that it’s a business that was practically non-existent prior to 2008 (when the Apple App Store first launched), the numbers become even more eyebrow-raising.
Before you quit your job and seek to make your fortune designing mobile apps, it’s worth noting that half of iOS developers and 64% of Android developers make less than $500 per month from their apps. Still, it’s clearly a growing market, and one that’s showing no sign of slowing down. New Year’s Day saw the biggest returns for a single day in the history of the App Store.
Movie theater attendance has remained pretty steady since the 1960s, and the dawn of the modern blockbuster in the 1970s, but there’s no denying that it has declined dramatically since its heyday in the 1940s:
More and more, Hollywood seems to be making more money from fewer people as ticket prices rise. When this is compared to the skyrocketing growth of mobile app development, it’s a bit of an eye-opener all around.