Undoubtedly a cleverly timed press release during what is arguably the peak day of CES 2013, Apple nonetheless announced some impressive milestones for the iOS App Store. It has now passed 40 billion app downloads (excluding re-downloads and app updates) and the rate at which apps are being downloaded increases each day. In fact, half of those downloads — 20 billion — took place in 2012 alone, despite the App Store having been open since 2008.
In addition to a milestone for downloads, developers are probably happier with the second big announcement: Apple has now paid out over $7 billion to developers. That includes incoming money from regular app purchases as well as in-app purchases.
Apple also got a handful of developers to brag about the success of their apps in the press release. “We were simply looking to create a game that was fun and easy to play, but once it hit the App Store, the game took off. This past year, we saw more than 75 million downloads of Temple Run on iOS,” said Keith Shepherd, co-founder of Imangi Studios, as one example.
The iOS App Store now has over 775,000 apps, 300,000 of which are optimized for the iPad, in 155 countries spread across 23 main categories.