Apple approaching 1 billion iPhone app downloads

The Apple app store debuted just 9 months ago and already nearly 1 billion apps have been downloaded. The number of downloads has actually doubled since January when the count was at 500 million. A counter to track the downloads has been added to the iTunes webpage and it is moving quickly with over 34 million apps downloaded since last Friday. As mentioned in a previous posting, in recent months we have seen an increase in the number of reading, learning, campus related, and social networking apps and given these new statistics, we can expect to see many more in the coming months. Additionally, an interesting chart on the Mobclix website features a breakdown of the number of apps in each of the 20 app categories. Books and Education apps are in the top 5 with 4842 applications (13.6%) and 2313 applications (6.5%) respectively. Apple has also released a listing of the top 20 of all time PAID apps and the top 20 FREE apps. Although Books and Education apps are not featured in the top 20, two of the top free apps include social networking sites Facebook and Myspace. With the popularity of the app store increasing everyday and rumors of a large screen Apple device due out later this year, we anticipate that Apple could make a considerable impact in the higher education market in the coming months.