Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s App Store just reached another milestone: the 40 billion download mark. On Monday morning, the Cupertino-based company surpassed 40 billion downloads since they first launched five years ago. In 2012, they nearly surpassed the 20 billion download mark, then in December they saw an upkick in 2 billion app downloads.
Last year, the App Store hit the 25 billion mark in the spring and 35 billion mark in October.
The numbers don’t lie, Apple still remains cream of the crop when it comes to downloads and those numbers are expected to grow. As Eddy Cue, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s senior vice president for Internet software and services, elaborated, developers made over 7 billion on the app store. This means that the tech giant will continue to provide that perfect ecosystem and give developers what they really want. It also doesn’t hurt that the Apple Store has over 500 million active accounts in the app store alone and that number is expected to grow. Right now, there is a total of 775,000 apps and over 300,000 are exclusively for the iPad.
Many of the apps found on the App Store have been huge successes for developers. For example; Imangi Studios (the makers behind popular game Temple Run), Autodesk, Flipboard, and Uber.
The App Store’s significant growth is no surprise considering their iPhone 5 and iPad 4 take the lead in mobile gadget sales. And last month’s jump was expected, considering the fact that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) products were one of the most popular gifts of the holiday season.
Flurry Analytics (research firm) predicts an acceleration of app downloads within the year. Just a week ago, they shared a report that detailed app downloads across both iOS and Android platforms. It’s estimated that there will be over 1 billion mobile downloads between now and the fourth quarter of this year.
