Apple has paid out $70 billion to developers

When Steve Jobs introduced Apple's App Store back in 2008, he introduced the developer-friendly platform with ... a free backgammon game.

Jobs called the system "pretty cool." Maybe not the hardest sell from a man famous for talking about how Apple products would change the world.

What he did stress, however, was the business side of the App Store. Developers would keep 70 percent of the revenue earned through their apps (Apple got the rest), with no fees attached. Free apps wouldn't cost their developers anything.

Nine years later, Apple is boasting about just how lucrative that deal ended up being.

Developers have now earned more than $70 billion through the App Store, Apple announced on Thursday in the run up to its Worldwide Developers Conference on June 5.

"Seventy billion dollars earned by developers is simply mind-blowing. We are amazed at all of the great new apps our developers create and can’t wait to see them again next week at our Worldwide Developers Conference," said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, in a press release.

Apple noted that among the biggest areas of recent growth has been for subscription services, which are up 58 percent in the past year. That might be the best news yet for companies that have worked to convince smartphone users to pay for content on their phones.

Apple also pushed back against that notion that apps have peaked and that people aren't downloading as many as the used to. Apple claimed that downloads have grown by 70 percent in the past year.

Yup, pretty cool indeed.