Apple App Store: New Year’s Day was biggest ever for downloads

Bumper January comes after record breaking 2014

Apple's App Store recent ran a special promotion to coincide with World Aids Day (Getty Images)

App Store customers spent nearly half a billion dollars in the first week of 2015, Apple has said, helping to make New Year’s Day the biggest in the stores history.

That was after a record breaking 2014, which saw billings up 50 per cent and $10 billion of revenues given to developers.

It said that the rise had been driven by the release of iOS 8, which features the new Swift programming language designed to help developers and Metal, which helps improve graphics. It said that the iOS 8’s new health and home focused frameworks, HomeKit and HealthKit, also helped developers.

It has also changed the way the store is organised. It now allows customers to watch a video of an app before they buy it, and allows developers to put together apps in App Bundles. It also made it possible for developers to release apps through the “TestFlight” service, which lets them put out apps in early versions before they are properly released.

The App Store was introduced in 2008, and it says that it has created 627,000 jobs in the US since. The store offers more than 1.4 million apps.