Apple: 2 Billion Apps Served And CountingApple: 2 Billion Apps Served And Counting

Another milestone for Apple and its iPhone Apps Store: Two billion applications have been downloaded from the Apps store by iPhone and iPod Touch users. Oh, and Apple was sure to make us aware that there are now 85,000 applications available.Apple was not the first company to provide applications to smartphones, but it certainly has been the most successful. In just over 14 months, Apple has convinced 50 million iPhone and iPod Touch users to download two billion applications. That's a lot of downloads.

Furthermore, the Apps store has swelled to a staggering 85,000 applications that have been developed by more than 125,000 developers in Apple's iPhone Developer Program. That's a lot of developers, and that's a lot of apps. Some say it's too many apps, but that's a silly argument most often posed by non-iPhone users.

Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, said in a prepared statement, "The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone. The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it."

Apple's Apps Store has clearly revolutionized the application market. Since the Apps store launched, nearly all the smartphone makers out there have announced and/or already launched apps stores of their own. Competing stores include those from Research In Motion for BlackBerries, the Windows Market Place for Windows Mobile, the Apps Catalog for webOS, and the Android Market for Android devices.

None of these other stores (those that have launched, anyway) have anywhere near the number of available applications as Apple does. In fact, I haven't seen any bold announcements about sales figures, either. How are the others faring? RIM, Google, Palm, care to comment? How many apps are your users downloading?