Let’s give a nice round of applause to GetJar, as the independent, multi-platform application store said it has seen more than 1 billion downloads, the most outside of you know who.
The company offers free apps to a variety of devices around the world and it said some of its most successful downloads include Facebook, Opera Mini, and eBuddy.
“We’re delighted to have reached this milestone in mobile app history,” said GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs, in prepared statement. “As a team, we’re dedicated to driving the app market forward through an open approach. We’ve supported over 60,000 apps from developers across all major platforms, including Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian and our open philosophy has been integral to our continued growth and the development within the industry. We’re looking forward to the next billion downloads.”
Of course, you can’t talk about the mobile app space without bringing up Apple and its successful App Store for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Apple’s program store has seen more than 5 billion app downloads over a few years and the company has paid over $1 billion to developers. This could also receive a boost when the company releases the iPhone 4 later this month.
It’s not just Apple, as the Android Market is gaining steam and each major smartphone platform has its own individual store. How can GetJar stay relevant in this environment? In previous conversations with Laurs, he told me that he likens his store to a supermarket and the individual app stores are more like boutique delis. Sure, users will go to the boutique places for their specific needs but there will also be a huge audience that wants the variety and simplicity of a supermarket. It’s pretty sound logic, particularly for the variety of feature phones GetJar supports, and the company continues to attract developers by boosting its creation and marketing tools.
[Via GetJar]