App Store and Google Play talk about app downloads

More than 50 billion apps have now been downloaded from Apple's App Store since it opened inJuly 2008, the company said yesterday — and Google is not far behind, announcing 48bn downloads from its Google Play store so far.

Together, the figures highlight the huge new business created by the explosive spread of smartphones over the past five years, with downloads running at around 1,500 per second across the two stores and generating millions for developers.

The 50 billionth app was downloaded by American Brandon Ashmore from Ohio, who receives a $10,000 gift card after downloading the word game Say The Same Thing — but that's small beer compared with the $9bn (£5.9bn) that have been paid out to app developers, representing 70% of the app prices. It's a gigantic new economy that can now make teenagers into millionaires and create entire new businesses. Apple, which takes the other 30% of the revenue, has generated $3.86bn.

Finnish company Rovio, which introduced its Angry Birds game to the App Store in December 2009 has since seen almost 2bn downloads worldwide on smartphones and tablets, while 17-year-old Londoner Nick D'Aloisio, sold his company that makes the Summly app to web giant Yahoo in March for an estimated £18m.


/The Guardian/