iOS developers earn $7 billion, while Apple keeps $3 billion.

Apple customers spent over $10 billion inside the company’s App Store in 2013, demonstrating the continuing appeal of native mobile apps and the company’s curated software distribution model.

In December alone, Apple App Store customers spent over $1 billion, the foremost revenue in one month for the reason that App Store’s debut in July 2008.

Apple said its iOS developers have earned $15 billion so far. That’s after Apple has taken its 30% cut. And almost half that payout, about $7 billion, was returned to developers in 2013, when Apple had about $10 billion in App Store sales and retained $3 billion.

Many companies will be thrilled to have earned $3 billion in net revenue from apps in 2013. As Bloomberg BusinessWeek observes, were Apple’s App Store listed by gross revenue among publicly traded companies, it should rank 238th, between Public Service Enterprise Group and Sherwin-Williams.

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For Apple, $3 billion is nearly a rounding error: The corporate generated $171 billion revenue in fiscal 2013, with $37 billion in profit.

Android apps haven’t performed besides, although the revenue gap between is shrinking. Consistent with a Business Insider report last month, for each $1 earned by iOS developers, Android developers earn $0.90.

All that cash seriously is not being evenly distributed among developers, however. The head developers collect the lion’s share of App Store revenue. Asymco analyst Horace Dediu estimates that iOS developer payments amount to $25 million an afternoon. Thus daily App Store gross revenue ought to be about $35 million.

According to investigate firm Distimo, the end 200 applications within the iOS App Store account for combined gross revenues of $18 million per day. So about half the daily App Store revenue goes to the makers of the pinnacle 200 apps. And the rest gets distributed the various developers of the million other apps inside the App Store, no less than folks that have actual users and a mechanism for monetization.

Exceptional apps and exceptional luck will continue to create occasional fortunes for developers. But as mobile analytics firm Flurry recently observed, the gold rush days are over.

“There’ll still be apps that tap into some vein of consumer interest or amusement and developers who strike it rich hence,” the firm noted in a blog post. “But overall, the successful developers in 2014 and beyond might be people who installed the exertions of identifying a target group of users, creating apps that work well for them, and continually refining and reinventing mobile experiences to profitably retain those users.”

Thomas Claburn is editor-at-large for InformationWeek. He have been writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications similar to New Architect, PC Computing, InformationWeek, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and tv. He’s the writer of a science fiction novel, Reflecting Fires, and his mobile game Blocfall Free is accessible for iOS, Android, and Kindle Fire.

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