Apple App Store hits 1.5 billion downloads
The Apple App Store grew at an astonishing pace right from the start, reaching 1 billion downloads in just 9 months. Now comes news that the store has reached 1.5 billion downloads in just one year.
Given that it took nine months to get to the one billion mark, and then just three months to hit 1.5 billion, it is clear that the popularity of the App Store, and perhaps (one would think) the iPhone itself, is accelerating. That would be just over 100,000k (yes, 100,000 * 1024) downloads per month in the first nine months, and over 160,000k downloads per month in the following three months. No matter how you parse the growth rate and the acceleration of same, that’s a lot of apps.
Those are truly amazing metrics, considering that the app store niche did not even exist until Apple invented it last year. The growth of the App Store makes the number of hamburgers sold by McDonald’s look like a glacial growth pattern by comparison. It is no mean feat to make the growth of McD’s look slow.
Apple skipper Steve Jobs has said, “The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality. With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.” He has a point. This growth, of course is fueled by the sale of 40 million iPhones thus far across the world.
That, by the way, makes it almost 40 apps downloaded for each phone sold, another interesting statistic. With more that 65,000 apps to be downloaded, there is certainly something for everybody. Apple is certainly also correct when it says that their App Store is “the largest applications store in the world,†according to an AppleInsider story. No one else even comes close. More amazing yet, the App Store is just a part of the larger iTunes store!
Despite sotto voice remarks that the App Store does not provide much of a revenue stream for Apple, most of us (and most companies) would be more than happy to add it to their books. Originally intended to be a way to attract customers to the iPhone, it has more than lived up to its promise.
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