iOS 17 Sherlocks an Entire Category - Erasing Millions in Revenue

With its latest update to iOS, Apple will release its own version of apps currently available from 3rd party developers -- essentially eating their lunch. This might seem harsh, but this isn't a new occurrence.

Apple has been doing that for years, enough that it has a name: Sherlocking.

This year Apple sherlocked quite a few apps. Journaling was the obvious one, but a more interesting one, in my opinion, is stickers!

You might think stickers is a tiny category, which is exactly what I was thinking when I watched the keynote, but the numbers are different than I expected!

I looked up the highest earning stickers apps on the App Store and was surprised to find not one but two apps with net revenue in the millions over the last year.

Millions! For stickers!

That couple is Sticker Maker + and WhatSticker.

Since the beginning of 2022, our estimates show the pair has earned a total of $4M globally. And that's net, so what the publishers get to keep after giving Apple its share.

With iOS 17 that figure is likely gone, or at least reduced drastically.

But that's not all. I went deeper and rounded up every other stickers app I could find on the App Store we have an estimate for - 40 more apps - about 35 more than I expected.

Together, the group earned more than $650K of net revenue every month over the last three months.

Between January and May of this year, our estimates show the group earned more than $3.1M in net revenue globally.

I can no longer call this category small. Sure, it wont rival TikTok and isn't a monthly millionaire. But then again, it's just stickers.

Will these apps transform into something that beats what's built into iOS 17 or will they disappear? If you're the developer of one of those, I really hope for option one.