Apple has proudly announced that its App Store for iOS devices has catered for a whopping 40 billion downloads since its inception in 2008.
Despite many noting the rise of Android and its catching up of iOS, the App Store has notched up yet another impressive milestone. What’s even more impressive is that half of the 40 billion apps ever downloaded were downloaded in 2012. That’s right; you lot downloaded nearly 20 billion apps within 12 months.
Apple reckons it currently has 500 million active users of its App Store, which currently hosts 775,000 different apps for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and iPad Mini. With a little math, that would equate to every active user downloading around 40 apps each in the last year.
“It has been an incredible year for the iOS developer community,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services. “Developers have made over seven billion dollars on the App Store, and we continue to invest in providing them with the best ecosystem so they can create the most innovative apps in the world.”
Of course, some of the most popular apps from the past year have provided an incredible contribution to such a huge number of downloads. Apple notes the hugely popular Temple Run, which notched up an amazing 75 million installs alone in the last year.
In contrast, at the last count (September 2012) Apple’s closest rival Google and its Play Store for Android devices currently held around 675,000 apps and had notched up 25 billion downloads.