Apple beaming as App Store hits 1.5 billion downloads
by Stevie Smith - Jul 15 2009, 15:30
App Store popularity still on the up. Image: Apple.
Evidently the popularity of iPhone and iPod Touch software applications continues to grow exponentially, following news that Apple’s online App Store has now surged beyond 1.5 billion downloads.
Arriving just a few days after the App Store celebrated its first anniversary of service (Saturday, July 11), Cupertino-based Apple Inc. announced yesterday that its application haven has now shifted 1.5 billion downloads and offers a whopping 65,000 different apps to customers across 77 countries.
“The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality,” trumpeted Apple CEO Steve Jobs in an official statement. “With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for [rival services] to catch up.”
With interest likely boosted by the recent launch of the third-generation iPhone 3GS – adding to the 40 million iPhone handsets already shipped – it’s also worth noting that the App Store only required the final three months of its first year of service in order to push from 1.0 billion to 1.5 billion downloads.
Eager to engage in the catching up Jobs refers to in his statement, rival handset makers and operating system creators such as Nokia, LG, Research In Motion, Microsoft and Google are all now offering their own application stores.
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