Apple App Store passes three billion downloads milestone
There is no stopping the juggernaut that is the Apple App Store as the company proudly announces today that it has now passed the three billion downloads milestone.
The Apple App Store has become a behemoth of a resource for the mobile market, and it shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. To give you an idea of how the store is doing nothing but accelerating, here is a time line of major milestones for the service:
- April 24, 2009 – 1 billion downloads
- July 14, 2009 – 1.5 billion downloads
- Sept. 28, 2009 – 2 billion downloads
- Jan. 5, 2010 – 3 billion downloads
The trek from one billion to two billion downloads took just over five months, but the next billion came in at just over three months. “Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months — this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”
To be fair, Apple does not give any data on how many of these downloads are first time downloads and how many of them are application updates. I know there are some days I check for updates on my iPod Touch and I have 12 of them to install, so I am fairly certain those numbers have to be included in these milestones. This of course takes nothing away from the success of the App Store, but it is something to keep in mind.
The announcement also mentions that the App Store is now open to users in 77 countries worldwide, so as the number of markets increases, so will the downloads. If the Apple Tablet proves to be true as many suspect, the number of app downloads will probably increase at such a rate that these proclamations will probably become weekly occurrences.
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January 5th, 2010
Anyway it shakes out still leaves it at the level of jaw dropping successful.
January 6th, 2010
Successful from a profit standpoint, sure. But a better metric on the apps providing a good user experience would be how many of these apps remain installed and in at least semi-regular use after 30 or 90 days.