Apple Services in Europe: Scale and Growth
by Horace Dediu
Apple offers an answer.
Since October 2023, Apple has been reporting the average monthly users of the App Store in 27 EU Member States. The reports are updated every six months.
I took three samples spanning 2023 to July 2024 to observe the evolution of the market.
A few notes:
- The list is complete including all member countries, with a combined population of 450 million people.
- The resolution is 1 million users per country which I assume to be rounding down. That is, if a country has 3.8 million users, it's reported at 3 million and .8 million is reported as "under 1 million"
- For this reason the error is an undercounting error.
- Some estimates are made to reflect this error when looking at the trajectory over time.
The samples I used yield the following user totals:
The totals are in millions.
Discussion
The totals are 124.61, 136.27, and 148.23 million for 2023, 2024 and 2025. The growth rate is about 9% for both years. This is significant growth implying a doubling in 8 years. The user population is about 33% of the entire population (year 2025) suggesting a potential doubling is possible though perhaps saturation might be reached before 66% and growth might slow. A 50% saturation point however is certainly possible and that would imply about 225 million users.
Adoption is highly correlated with income (r-squared = .75)
The EU is a diverse region with 27 distinct countries. How they absorb Apple's ecosystem is quite likely to be a good indicator for other regions. The relationship between income and adoption is certainly worth considering.
7 comments
Sacto Joe ·
Thanks, Farshad, for fixing this link! Looks like it's working like a charm...
Sacto Joe ·
So hopefully, more folks will now begin to use this Asymco feature.
Joseph Bland, aka Sacto Joe
Sacto Joe ·
Back on the subject: Horace, is there a way to compare this with overall average growth for Apple worldwide, and maybe for a select few regions?
My guess is it's slower growth than in, say, the US or China.
Also, I like that we can now expect to "track" this going forward. For example, I thoroughly expect to see a falloff as a result of Apple's pandering to this President. He is literally the most divisive figure in the US outside of the Civil War right now, massively and purposefully so. We thought of President Obama as the Great Conciliator. President Trump is the Great Divider.
Of course, behind him are the oil oligarchs. It's no coincidence that he has both attacked green energy and promoted dirty energy. And I don't consider this a political position: Just a statement of reality, albeit few if any are bringing it fully to the public consciousness....
Elliot Z ·
@Sacto Joe: And now we have Operation Epstein Fury!
Farshad Nayeri ·
Joe, stay tuned for regional data and more...
Sacto Joe ·
Thanks for posting, Eliot! I’ve just been looking around at who’s been posting here, and it appears there’s at least a handfull. Encouraging!
Sacto Joe ·
Looking forward to it, Farshad!