Apple says New Year’s Day was biggest day ever for App Store, with $240 million in sales

The Apple App Store saw a record day for revenues on January 1, with customers racking up almost $240 million in sales.

December was also a bumper month, with $3 billion in sales, according to a press release. Super Mario Run alone notched up 40 million downloads in the four days following its release and went on to become the most downloaded app on both Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

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The holiday period is always a busy time for app stores, given that this is when many people are likely to be playing games and downloading apps on new devices they’ve procured. And people generally have a lot more leisure time at their disposal.

But these are notable figures for Apple, as they represent a sizable increase over last year. While New Year’s Day 2016 was previously the biggest day in the App Store’s history, it only resulted in $144 million in sales — almost $100 million less than this year.

Elsewhere, Apple says that in 2016 developers earned more than $20 billion, an increase of more than 40 percent from 2015. Apple has paid out $60 billion since the App Store’s inception in 2008. Last year’s figures reveal that developers had earned $40 million since 2008, which means that the App Store generated a staggering $20 billion in revenue for developers in 2016. That’s a third of the total amount the App Store has generated for developers since it opened.