With a global customer base of more than 50 million iPhone and iPod touch owners, Apple’s iTunes App Store has more apps than ever with an announcement today that there are now more than 100,000 different apps for download, so if you have a unique problem or request, there is most likely an app for that.
While Apple didn’t give any figures on how many App Store downloads there has been to date, we can extrapolate that there have been at least 2.4 billion, given that there were more than 2 billion downloads on 28 September when Apple CEO Steve Jobs said half a billion of these were in the last quarter alone, indicating exponential growth.
“The App Store has forever changed the mobile-gaming industry and continues to improve,” said Travis Boatman, vice-president of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile.
“With a global reach of over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch users, the App Store has allowed us to develop high-quality EA games that have been a huge success with customers.”
EA Mobile has several games on the App Store, including SimCity, the Sims 3, Monopoly, Wolfenstein and Lemonade Tycoon.
“With 10,000 downloads a day, worldwide customer response to our ‘I Am T-Pain App’ has exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Jeff Smith, CEO of Smule.
“The App Store has given us a unique opportunity to create and grow a very successful business, and we’re looking forward to an exciting future.”
Here in Ireland, we have our own burgeoning iPhone app developer community on apps.ie, a platform and showcase for the programming talent and Ireland-centric apps out there.
Some great local iPhone apps include gigs, cinema and entertainment listing guide Entertainment.ie, as well as the DublinBikes app from Fusio and the Dublin Bus Maps from Philip Kirwan.
By Marie Boran
Photo: The iPhone 3GS.
