Apple has crossed another significant milestone and it is telling the whole world about it. The company announced yesterday that the app store had passed the 25 billion downloads mark. Last July, Apple’s App Store passed 15 billion downloaded apps. The company had been running a promotion called 25 Billion Apps Countdown Promotion since Feb. 13 and had said that the winner would be listed on the site within 10 days of the download.
In addition, the winner would be awarded with a $10,000 app store gift card (that’s a lot of apps!) and be acknowledged on the website. Apple has been working on streamlining its App Store experience even as apps cross the 420,000 mark and the number of developers creating for iOS continues to rise.
Apple last week crossed the half a trillion dollars valuation mark on the back of strong sales as well as anticipation for the launch of the iPad 3 and other upcoming products such as the iPhone 5. Apple is also gearing for the sale of its 100 millionth iPad with the first two generations of the iPad surpassing all expectations in terms of sales. This will probably also push the app downloads well beyond the 25 billion mark it has just passed as more people acquire the tablet and iPhone devices and download even more apps.
Apple will, however, be wary of the issues raised about its app store because it was only recently revealed that Apple had allowed app developers to include features in their apps that harvested users’ phone book records and even more shockingly, their entire photo albums as well. The company responded with some new tighter measures but the privacy debate just wont go away. Users all over the web have been spooked by these privacy issues and there will be more calls for tighter privacy measures even as app downloads balloon to astronomical heights.
