Apple App Store generated $1.1 billion sales during the holiday season

Apple officially announced the App Store generated $1.1 billion in sales during the 2015 holiday season. In fact, the company calls it the "biggest ever" milestone for the App Store for the two-week period ending January 3, 2016.

Christmas and New Year's have both set single-day records with more than $144 million sales. In total, Apple has paid out close to $40 billion to developers since the App Store launched eight years ago.

The App Store had a holiday season for the record books. We are excited that our customers downloaded and enjoyed so many incredible apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV, spending over $20 billion on the App Store last year alone,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “We're grateful to all the developers who have created the most innovative and exciting apps in the world for our customers. We can't wait for what's to come in 2016.

The company also shared another interesting statistic: it has now created 1.9 million jobs in the US alone. 1.4 million of them are related to the community of app creators, software engineers and entrepreneurs building iOS apps. Previously, the company said it was responsible for 1.2 million jobs in Europe and 1.4 million jobs in China.

For 2015, Apple App Store sales topped $20 billion. Apple keeps 30% of the App Store revenue, meaning the company made $6 billion for 2015 after paying developers.

Source