Apple's App Store records around half a billion sales in the first week of 2015

Apple has announced that its customers spent around half a billion dollars on apps and in-app purchases during the first week of this month, making it a new record for the App Store.

In addition, the iPhone maker also shared that New Year’s Day 2015 was the biggest day ever in App Store sales history, and 2014 was a record breaking year for the company, with billings rising 50 percent and apps generating more than $10 billion in revenue for developers, bringing total developer earnings to date to around $25 billion.

“This year is off to a tremendous start after a record-breaking year for the App Store and our developer community,” said Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue.

The Cupertino-based company noted the introduction of iOS 8 as one of the major factors that contributed to the App Store's success. Launched back in September last year, the mobile OS brought along features like HealthKit, which lets health and fitness developers share data with the Health app; HomeKit, a framework allowing developers to create software that discovers, configures, communicates with and controls devices for home automation; and Swift, a new programming language that the company says makes it even easier for developers to create apps.

In addition, Apple also pointed to a couple of App Store features that were unveiled in 2014: App Previews and App Bundles. While the former allows users to watch a short video demo of an app before downloading or purchasing it, the latter allows developers to offer groups of apps to users at a discount.