The news comes as there was a 38 percent increase in spending on Apple iPhone apps in 2020, according to SensorTower, with each user spending an average of $138

The App Store ecosystem enabled $643 billion in billings and sales last year, marking a 24 percent year-over-year rise, Apple said in a Wednesday press release.

Apple said in the release that an independent study by economists from the Analysis Group discovered that programmers selling merchandise and services in a number of areas expanded their operations as they reached clients around the world.

Developers on the App Store prove every day that there is no more innovative, resilient or dynamic marketplace on earth than the app economy, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in the release. The apps we’ve relied on through the pandemic have been life-changing in so many ways.

Apple said that the number of small developers globally has expanded by 40 percent since 2015, comprising more than nine in 10 App Store developers. The study considers small developers to be those that have under one million downloads and under $1 million in earnings throughout all of their apps in a given year.

Moreover, 25 percent of small developers who sell electronics goods and services through the App Store have expanded their earnings by a minimum of 25 percent each year for the last half of a decade, and nearly eight in 10 small developers on the App Store are active in storefronts across multiple nations.

The news comes as there was a 38 percent increase in spending on Apple iPhone apps in 2020, per insights provider SensorTower, with each user spending an average of $138. That figure includes spending on in-app purchases in addition to premium apps.

Average consumer spending on apps per iPhone in the U.S. has grown considerably each year at no less than 20 percent, and that trend is unlikely to change soon, the report stated. Since consumer habits may shift as in-person spaces begin to open once again, 2021 might very well see less significant year-over-year growth than 2020.