Australian app developer Hipster Whale has cashed in on record billings of half a billion US dollars in in the first week of January for Apple's App store.
New Year’s Day 2015 marked the single biggest day ever in App Store sales history.
These milestones follow a record-breaking 2014, in which billings rose 50 percent and apps generated over US$10 billion in revenue for developers.
To date, App Store developers have earned a cumulative US$25 billion from the sale of apps and games.
Victorian game studio Hipster Whale developed Crossy Road, a free mobile game, in just 12 weeks.
It was founded just four months ago by Matt Hall and Andy Sum.
The game has climbed to number one on family charts in US, Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, South Korea and the Netherlands.
Hipster Whale co-founder, Matt Hall, said he could never have dreamed of this level of success with Crossy Road only being available on the App Store for the last six weeks of the year,” he said.
“In a couple of months we were able to create a simple, fun game that was featured on the App Store and climbed to the top of the App Store charts around the world - it’s amazing.”
Developer innovation on the App Store in 2014 was fuelled by iOS 8 featuring Swift, a powerful new programming language that makes it even easier for developers to create great apps, as well as the introduction of robust frameworks HealthKit and HomeKit.
HealthKit lets health and fitness developers share data with the Health app while HomeKit is a framework allowing developers to create software that discovers, configures, communicates with and controls devices for home automation.
iOS 8 also introduced developers to Metal, a graphics technology created to maximise the performance of the A7 and A8 chips, which is being embraced by major game developers around the world.
In 2014, the App Store also unveiled new features for developers including app previews and app bundles, TestFlight for beta testing pre-release apps, an expanded Kids Category to showcase apps specifically made for children under 12, China UnionPay as a payment option for customers in China and Apple Pay.
Apple launched App Store in 2008, and since then, an entire industry has been built around app design and development.
The App Store offers more than 1.4 million apps for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users in 155 countries around the world, with more than 725,000 of these apps made for iPad.
Apple vice president of internet software and services, Eddie Cue, said the year was off to as tremendous start.
“We're so proud of the creativity and innovation developers bring to the apps they create for iOS users and that the developer community has now earned over US$25 billion.”
