Over 1 million apps approved for Apple App Store since launch

It may come as no surprise to most that Apple’s smartphones, apart from the way they are crafted, are hugely successful because of their apps. In what may be yet another feather in Apple’s hat, an application discovery company, Appsfire, has tweeted that Apple has approved one million apps for its App Store.

Elaborating on the tweet, a report by The Next Web has stated that Ouriel Ohayon, the co-founder of Appsfire, has informed TNW that one million submissions were made to the Apple App Store since 2008. Out of those, 493,289 were paid apps and 158,848 were games. Of the 736,247 apps currently live, 336,270 apps (approx 45 percent) are paid apps.

Over 1 million apps approved in the Apple App Store

The report by The Next Web states, “While it’s unlikely that Apple will publicly share the fact — the company traditionally focuses on the number of live apps in its App Store — it shows how big the marketplace has become. The Store itself is accessed by a large percentage of Apple’s 400 million iTunes account holders, accounting for 35 billion downloads in it four year life.”

Commenting on the App Store and the downloads, at the iPhone 5 event, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that 90 percent of the apps that are available on the App Store were downloaded every month. He stated, “The average customer now is using over 100 apps. It’s been an absolute revolution. It’s phenomenal. Together with the incredible products, these have helped us achieve an incredible milestone."

At the iPad mini announcement, Apple had recently announced that the App Store had over 700,000 apps. This was a fitting time for this announcement as the iPad mini supports all the apps that are optimized for the full-sized iPad.

In related news, the Apple App Store started displaying prices of all its paid apps in rupees from last month. The move by Apple is a good one as this reduces the need to convert the prices and gamble on the rate of the dollar to the rupee. The Google Play store already displays the cost of paid apps in rupees. Now, there appears to be uniformity amongst the biggest app markets.

While it may not be a competition, Google declared that the Google Play store now houses 700,000 apps, and this puts it on par with the Apple App Store.

A recent report stated that by luring software developers to its Android platform, Google is attempting to eliminate a key selling point Apple has used for the iPhone and iPad.

Applications have become a battleground as the two companies look for an edge in the $219.1 billion smartphone market, akin to how Microsoft Corp. dominated the personal-computer business by getting other companies to write programs for its Windows operating system.