Apple App Store hits 3 billion downloads in just 18 months

Happy 3 billion downloads to the Apple App Store. Yep, the 100,000 plus applications in the App Store have been downloaded over 3 billion times in just a year and a half. Steve Jobs says it's like nothing they've seen before - well, Mr. Jobs, it's like nothing anyone has seen before.

You wanna hear the scary part? Just over three months ago - September 28 2009 to be exact - Apple announced that there are over 85,000 apps in the App Store and over 2 billion downloads.

On July 14 2009, or just under three months before that, there were "only" 65,000 apps and 1.5 billion downloads. At this rate, they'll probably be announcing over 4.5 billion downloads by late March. One last bit of math - with about 50 million Apple iPhone and iPod touch users worldwide, that comes up to 60 application downloads on average per customer.

To help users sift through the noise of various torchlight and weird sounds applications, Apple included the Genius feature - it recommends apps on the basis of your past downloads. There's even a competitor called Appsaurus, which claims make better recommendations due to its more advanced algorithms.

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