Apple's App Store hits 25bn download landmark

The tech giant made the announcement on its homepage yesterday (4 March) and is giving away a $10,000 (£6,315) store voucher for the person who downloaded the 25-billionth app.

With greater penetration of Apple products on the market, the App Store has recorded a steep rate of growth over the past year, having passed the 10-billion download mark in January last year .

It also expanded the app store, beyond apps for its mobile devices, to include Mac apps in January 2011. Within 24 hours of opening, one million Mac apps had been downloaded.

Apple's app store model faces rising competition, not only from Google's Android Marketplace, but also from the rise of developers opting to create HTML5 web-based apps, which can be used across multiple devices from a mobile browser.

Last week, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Facebook said it was partnering with industry stakeholders including Orange and Samsung, to help develop a mobile web standard and simpler payment system to enable developers to create apps for the mobile web, rather than rely on third-party app stores.

Ian Carrington, mobile sales director for Google UK, told Marketing at the conference that traditional apps would survive alongside the mobile web.

He said: "The first billion took [Android Market] two years [to reach] and the latter billion took less than 30 days, so apps are very much liked by consumers."

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This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk