Apple’s App Store tops 1.5 billion downloads

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It only recently turned one, but Apple’s App Store this week celebrated the 1.5 billion download milestone.

Just a couple of months ago, back in April, one billion applications had been downloaded , illustrating just how popular the App Store has become. Indeed, to mark the most recent milestone, Apple confirmed that there are now more than 100,000 developers and 65,000 applications included in the iPhone developer programme.

“The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, in a statement. “With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.”

‘Others’ is most likely a reference to contenders to Apple’s app crown, including Google’s Android Market, Microsoft and Palm. Even LG this week announced plans to muscle in on the space by launching its own applications store.

“”As we’ve announced earlier, LG is planning to invest heavily in the smartphone market going forward, with ten smartphones being introduced this year alone” Dr. Skott Ahn, LG Mobile’s chief executive, said in a statement.

“As the trend has shown, the appeal of smartphones is in the diversity and usefulness of the applications. Opening our own Application Store will allow us to offer the best content and applications for our devices so that LG phone owners will get the best possible ownership experience.”

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