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October 23, 2012

35B Downloads and Counting for Apple App Store

By Steve Anderson, Contributing TMCnet Writer

While many likely think Apple (News - Alert) is beyond milestones, given its incredible success and market dominance, there are still plenty of hurdles left for Apple to cross. One of the latest showed up at the big Apple stage show today, as the tech giant dropped some exciting numbers about the App Store, including news of having recently crossed 35 billion downloads total in the App Store.



Just last month, Tim Cook mounted the stage to talk Apple, and dropped the word that the App Store boasted 700,000 iOS apps, with 275,000 of them being specifically geared toward the iPad. Today, he assured the audience that the numbers were still growing, to the point where Apple could announce its other milestone, having recently paid out a grand total of $6.5 billion to developers since the App Store's launch, in the process of attaining its 35 billion downloads.

Given that Apple has paid out $6.5 billion to the developers so far, it's a clear bet that the App Store has accrued plenty of cash for Apple proper. That's the kind of thing that's a big help to a company, allowing it to trade not only on differences in its hardware, but on what its hardware will offer up down the line.

Considering that Google Play – made up of the Android Market, Google (News - Alert) Music and the Google eBookstore – recently celebrated its 25 billion download milestone, it's clear Apple's got something of an edge in the market, though not without some pretty healthy competition.

Though the competition between Apple and Google is quite clearly established, there are also plenty of destabilizing elements looking to enter in, like the impact of Microsoft's (News - Alert) Surface tablet coming later this week, as well as the continuing matter of HTML5 and its impact on mobile device use. Apple may have a lead right now, but the big question is: will Apple be able to hold that lead into the near future, especially given the number of firms gunning for the top spot?

That's a question that only time will be able to answer, of course, but the future looks pretty bright for Apple.




Edited by Braden Becker
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