Apple expands developer data tools in App Store Connect

Apple on Wednesday announced a significant update to App Store Connect, which serves as the company’s platform for developers to publish, manage, and track the performance of their applications. The update introduces more than 100 new metrics designed to help developers track monetization and subscription performance. These new metrics are intended to provide developers with a deeper understanding of how their apps generate revenue and how effectively their subscription offers are performing.

Among the new features are subscription reports that can be exported directly via an API. This capability allows developers to analyze their subscription data offline or integrate Apple’s first-party data directly into their own internal systems. Additionally, the update introduces peer group benchmarks, which allow developers to compare their app’s performance against competitors in key areas such as download-to-paid conversions and proceeds per download. To help developers analyze these metrics, Apple has updated App Store Connect to support up to seven filters simultaneously, enabling more granular data analysis.

While several third-party app intelligence platforms, such as Sensor Tower and Appfigures, as well as subscription-specific services like RevenueCat, offer estimates of app performance, Apple’s new metrics are based entirely on its own first-party data. To address privacy concerns associated with this data, Apple emphasized that it uses aggregated cohort data to protect user privacy. The company also utilizes differential privacy techniques to protect the individual performance data of developers when generating peer group benchmarks.

This update arrives as the broader tech industry debates the future of traditional mobile applications in an AI-driven landscape. Some industry figures, such as the CEO of smartphone manufacturer Nothing, have theorized that smartphone apps will eventually disappear as the web becomes populated by AI agents capable of performing tasks on behalf of users. Apple, however, appears to be positioning its ecosystem to integrate with AI rather than be replaced by it. According to Bloomberg, Apple is planning to announce an AI-powered Siri at its upcoming developer conference this June, with the assistant reportedly designed to complete tasks directly inside apps.

Why it matters

Apple is updating its App Store Connect platform to provide developers with deeper, first-party data insights, aiming to bolster the App Store ecosystem as the industry debates the future of apps in an AI-driven landscape.