Apple’s App Store for iPad has just reached an incredible milestone: 100,000 individual apps now available for download.
You might think 100,000 isn’t a huge amount, especially given the 500,000+ apps available for iPhone and iPod Touch. If you are thinking that, let’s just go back to April 2010 – just 14 months ago. Steve Jobs had just unveiled the original iPad to the world. People were both amazed and incredibly sceptical, with some even saying that the iPad was a non-starter, a failure. Just 14 months on and Apple has approved over 100,000 apps for the iPad, an amazing feat.
In March of this year Apple hit the 75,000 milestone for apps on iPad, and just three months on from that they have added a further 25,000 to hit the 100k mark. This shows that the growth of the iPad app store is increasing at a fast pace, and we don’t think it will slow down anytime soon.
It’s not just the apps that are doing well either, the iPad 2 device itself is literally flying off the shelves. Apple forecast 9 million units sold this spring, and 14 million over the summer. So far Apple has sold 25 million iPad and iPad 2s worldwide since April 3rd 2010 – when the first Wi-Fi only iPad went on sale in the US.
We can’t forget that Apple isn’t alone in the tablet market, however. There’s recently been a huge surge in the number of Android tablets available, as well as the Blackberry Playbook and forthcoming HP TouchPad tablet, running Palm’s WebOS 3.0 software. There’s a great selection out there for people looking to get into the tablet sector, but there’s no doubt that Apple have really stormed ahead and claimed position as market leaders.
Will Apple be toppled by Android tablets, WebOS Tablets or even the Blackberry Playbook? Let us know what your favourite tablet is in why, in no more than 180 characters, by tweeting us on our Gadget Helpline Twitter Page.