Apple celebrates 25 billion apps downloaded from the App Store

Whether you're someone who knocks down pigs in Angry Birds or hunt for the nearest Thai food place with Urban Spoon, chances are if you're an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch user, you've helped Apple reach a huge milestone.

Apple announced today that 25 billion apps have been downloaded from their App Store. This marks huge progress since they first released app-building toolkit to third-party developers almost four years ago to the day.

"The 25 billion milestone is a symbol for the explosive growth of the app economy," says Al Hilwa, applications development software analyst at the IDC research firm in a Globe and Mail story. "Apps bring a simplicity of interaction that eluded previous generations. Enterprise applications will eventually follow consumer ones, marking an industry transition to this style of software."

To celebrate the downloading of the 25^th billionth app, Apple awarded a $10,000 App Store gift card to Chunli Fu of Qingdao, China. Fu downloaded the free Disney-backed game Where's My Water? at exactly the right time, making him lucky number 25 billion, according to the story.

Both Android and Blackberry have taken a cue from Apple and now use the app model for their mobile devices, and have met with some success. As of last December, the Android Market (which also launched in 2008, albeit later in the year) has delivered over 10 billion downloads, with one billion apps now being downloaded every 30 days. The BlackBerry App World hit a smaller milestone earlier this year, passing the two billion download mark in January.

In honour of Apple's momentous occasion, here are a few tidbits about the App Store:

Average price paid for an App Store app: $1.91 USD

Number of apps in the App Store: 583,922

Number of apps downloaded from the App Store daily: 33 million (as of June 2011)

Number of app submissions per day: 623 (average over the last month)

Most popular category of apps: Games

Most facts from 148apps.biz.

(Screengrab from apple.com)