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In its first year in service, the Apple Store is claiming more than 1.5 billion downloads
It doesn’t seem that long ago that Apple’s App Store opened for business, but it’s been more than a year already and the company says consumers have downloaded more than 1.5 billion apps. That’s over 4 million a day.
It also doesn’t seem that long ago that there were 50,000 apps available, now the company says they have 65,000 – that means they’re adding an average of 178 a day.
Mind you, it hasn’t all been plain sailing for the company, with more than a few applications raising eyebrows including the $1000 “I Am Rich” idea, which was via the aptly named German software developer Armin Heinrich. People paid a premium to have a flashing red light on their home screen. Then there was the recently deleted
Hottest Girls application, which somehow slipped through the company’s vetting system.
“The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality,” claims Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.”
The App Store works with both iPod touch and iPhone including the new iPhone 3GS. Apple has shipped over 40 million of these devices that run apps from the App Store.
