One year and two months after it was launched, the Apple App Store has crossed a staggering milestone of two billion app downloads. What makes the number even more amazing is that the last one billion apps were downloaded in just over five months.
The Apple App Store was launched on July 11,2008. With the iPhone now available in over 77 countries worldwide and with over 50 million iPhones and iPod Touch units sold worldwide, it is no wonder that the App Store is clocking so many downloads in such a quick time. Currently, there are over 85,000 apps available on the app store and over 125,000 developers are enrolled in the Apple’s iPhone developer program.
So, how much does Apple make from the App Store? According to a study by Bernstein Research, with over 13%-21% of all downloaded apps being paid apps, and with an average price per app being $3, Apple could be well making anywhere between $240 million to $440 million every year just from the sale of apps to iPhone and iPod touch owners.
This is just the monetary part. Apple stands to gain much more than just this. With such a huge inventory of apps on the app store, the iPhone easily surpasses any other smartphone in the market when it comes to the sheer number of things one can do with their phone. So even if we were to assume that the other smartphones like Palm Pre were technologically better than the iPhone, the staggering number of apps on the Apple App Store could turn to be the deciding factor for the customer.
Apple is just a week or two away from launching iPhone in the Chinese market. It will be interesting to see if they succeed in getting a foothold in the world’s biggest mobile market. If they indeed succeed in doing so, then that could usher in an even more competitive advantage to the company which already enjoys a yawning gap between themselves and the rest of the smartphone manufacturers.
