Apple opens first European iOS app development centre

Consumer tech giant Apple is creating Europe’s first iOS app development centre in Naples, Italy, which is designed to provide training and assistance to iOS developers.

Apple is keen to promote the iOS app store as more than just another revenue stream for itself, pointing to the 1.4 million jobs it claims to have created in Europe and the many billions of dollars of revenue it has paid out to iOS developers since 2008. Apple reported over $5 billion in revenue from its services division in Q4 2015 alone.

“Europe is home to some of the most creative developers in the world and we’re thrilled to be helping the next generation of entrepreneurs in Italy get the skills they need for success,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “The phenomenal success of the App Store is one of the driving forces behind the more than 1.4 million jobs Apple has created in Europe and presents unlimited opportunities for people of all ages and businesses of all sizes across the continent.”

Roberto Mancina, CEO and founder of virtual ticket app developer Qurami, said: “Apple’s continued innovation inspires us to create the best mobile experiences and make our customers’ lives just a little bit easier. Apple’s app ecosystem is the anchor for our business and developing across Apple’s operating systems has enabled us to easily and quickly bring the Qurami experience to iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch users.”

Apple has even been dabbling in a spot of app development of its own, announcing Music Memos – a tool for musicians – and a bunch of new features for its GarageBand music composition app. A musician called Ryan Adams made this remarkable claim about the new app: “It quite literally blew my mind how Music Memos could transform a single guitar idea into a whole composition with a virtual drummer loose enough that it felt like you were having your mind read by some A.I. musician and a choice of stand-up or electric bass accompaniments.”

Incidentally App Annie has recently published its 2015 retrospective, which revealed that over the past two years Google Play download volumes have grown to such an extent that that they’re now double those of iOS. In spite of that, however, iOS app revenues are almost double those of Google Play.

This is symptomatic of the contrasting business models of the two companies, with Apple chasing margin on product sales while Google sells advertising to an audience acquired by offering them products for free. It’s likely that a far higher proportion of the apps downloaded from Google Play are of the ‘freemium’ variety, which would be a major reason for the revenue anomaly, another being the much lower ASP of Android devices and their consequent appeal to poorer consumers.