By Graham K. Rogers

A press release from Apple announced record-breaking sales on New Year's Day on the App Store of almost $240 million, to go with the $3 billion sales for December and $20 billion of earnings for developers in 2016.

It is interesting that following all the negative news about Apple in the last few weeks - and with its quarterly results coming in about 3 weeks - Apple today drew a line in the sand and pointedly (unusually) announced that the App Store started the year with its busiest single day ever on New Year's Day with nearly $240 million in purchase. This apparently follows a record-breaking holiday season and "a year of unprecedented developer earnings and breakout app hits."

In 2016 developer earnings were up over 40 percent from 2015 and exceeded $20 billion. Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing said, "We want to thank our entire developer community for the many innovative apps they have created - which together with our products - help to truly enrich people's lives."

Apple's press release added that, Customers broke all-time records this holiday season with purchases from the App Store topping $3 billion in December. In the same month, Nintendo's Super Mario Run made history with more than 40 million downloads in just four days after its release, and was the most downloaded app globally on Christmas Day and New Year's Day. The App Store's top-grossing markets include the US, China, Japan and the UK, with China experiencing record year-over-year growth at 90%.

With the introduction of iMessage apps and SiriKit in iOS 10, developers created exciting new types of app experiences. iPhone and iPad customers now have access to over 21,000 iMessage apps to send stickers and easily collaborate with friends, and for the first time ever, users can ask Siri to book rides, make payments, return a call and more.

Since subscriptions became available across all 25 app categories this fall, including Games and Kids, customers can subscribe to their favorite services from over 20,000 apps, with Netflix, HBO Now, Line, Tinder and MLB.com At Bat among last year's most popular. iPhone and iPad customers grew the App Store's subscription billings significantly in 2016, to $2.7 billion, up 74% from 2015.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life. He can be followed on Twitter (@extensions_th)