Apple iPhone and iPod Touch continue to enjoy incredible success. The App Store powering these platforms has now surpassed 3 billion downloads since July 2008, Apple has announced today. This includes both free and paid apps.
"Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months; this is like nothing we've ever seen before," said Apple chief executive Steve Jobs.
The App Store is seeing increasing competition from the likes of BlackBerry Apps World, Google's Android Market, and Microsoft's Windows Marketplace for Mobile, but Apple isn't at all concerned. The company's in a very strong leadership position. "We see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon," boasted Jobs.
In November it was announced that the App Store had reached 100,000 apps, of which roughly 20% are games. Some analysts believe that Apple's incredible success has been eating away at some of the business for PSP and DS. Investors have been blown away by the success of the App Store. “We had no idea there would be two billion downloads by October,” commented Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy to the Financial Times in December. “Most people within Apple, if you had told them it would be a fifth of that by now, they would have been pretty happy.”
