14 DAY TRIAL // In a press release issued just moments ago, Apple has confirmed passing the two billion application downloads on its iTunes App Store, with more than 85,000 apps being currently hosted in the venue. Driving iPhone and iPod touch sales since its debut last year, the App Store has had its ups and downs, but continues to do extremely well for Apple Inc.
“Apple today announced that more than two billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world,” the first lines of the report in question read. “There are now more than 85,000 apps available to the more than 50 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide and over 125,000 developers in Apple’s iPhone Developer Program,” the iPhone maker adds.
A statement coming from the company’s CEO is also present in the report, with Steve Jobs noting that, “The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone.” Steve Jobs adds that, “The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it.”
Enumerating the ingredients for such a tremendous success, the Cupertino-based company reveals that, at the moment, iPhone and iPod touch customers in 77 countries worldwide can choose from a huge range of apps in 20 categories. As App Store users should know, application divisions including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel offer unlimited ways of turning the iPhone into a gaming console, an e-reader, a banking tool, and even into a powerful navigation system.
The report also invokes iTunes 9, the latest version of Apple’s digital media player, whose features include an easy-to-use app organizer for iPhone and iPod touch owners handling dozens of apps.
However, Apple again fails to disclose the number, or at least the percentage, of paid and free apps accounting for the two-billion figure. The scales are, undoubtedly, tipped towards the freeware front.
Also worth noting is that Apple just recently confirmed the presence of around 75,000 apps in the App Store. Going by today's report, in less than a month, that number increased to 85,000, signaling that developers continued to pour copious amounts of resources into the service.