Almost 3 billion apps were downloaded by iOS users across the month of December 2013, Apple has revealed, with $1 billion spent across the course of the last month of the year.

The numbers – released as a follow up to a report published by Vision Mobile suggesting app developers from across the UK will add £4 billion to the economy in 2014 – are designed to show the App Store's continued dominance on mobile.

Indeed, Apple cites Distimo numbers that suggest the App Store still has a 63 percent to 37 percent market share advantage over Google Play when it comes to global revenue from apps – third-party Android marketplaces, of course, not included in the figures.

The numbers game

Elsewhere in the blank of stats, Apple reveals the App Store now has more than 1.2 million apps on sale in total, with cumulative downloads having surpassed 70 billion.

App Store customers spent a total of $10 billion in 2013, with developers having made a cumulative earnings total of $15 billion since the marketplace launched – around half of which was generated in the last four quarters.

In all, more than 75 billion apps have been downloaded in the App Store's lifetime, with 300 million people visting the marketplace every week.