A billion of anything is a lot of things. A billion apps downloaded from the Apple App Store in nine short months is a fascinating figure and one that may well have helped change an industry.

Last night, a lucky iPhone or Touch user downloaded that billionth app and won a plethora of Apple merchandize ($10,000 in iTunes credit, a 17-inch MacBook Pro, a 32GB iPod touch, and an Apple Time Capsule, according to a PC World story.) The Apple Web site lit up like Las Vegas and a Web celebration was held. The company talked about all of the Web traffic it was driving, since the billionth download happened just after the release of the latest numbers from AdMob, showing that Apple still leads that pack. In short, a good time was had by all.

The App Store sales are just one way to look at the success of Apple’s mobile platforms, the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Another way is the numbers of devices they have sold, also in a relatively short time. In just a couple of years of sales, there are 37 million of these devices in the field, over 21 million of them iPhones and over 15 million Touches. There are 35,000 apps available in the app store, even after the shaken baby was thrown out. The AdMob numbers show that the Apple mobile platforms generate about half of the mobile ad traffic, well ahead of any competitor, so we can be sure that the people that own all those devices are actually using them.

All this is from a pair of mobile devices selling for premium prices, thought too high by many. It is hard to view the iPhone, the iPod Touch, the App Store, and Apple itself as anything but barely-mitigated successes. You can, if you wish, nitpick the choice of AT&T as exclusive US carrier, the somewhat arbitrary way in which the App store is governed, and the features that the iPhone has been missing for two years. But the numbers don’t lie. Apple, its mobile devices, and it apps have taken the mobile world by storm and changed the way millions of people lead their lives. That is one pretty good definition of success.

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Entry was posted on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 1:03 pm under News, iPhone, iPod Touch.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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