App Store Tops Over 1.5 Billion Downloads in One Year

Apple yesterday released some official numbers on the status of the App Store, and they are as predicted, “mind-blasting” (NSFW–language) in the word of Russell Peters. The App Store has continued to play a major role in the selling of iPhone hardware.

The status of the App Store after celebrating its one year anniversary:
– 1.5 billion downloads
– 65,000 apps available to 77 countries
– 100,000 developers

Here’s what CEO Steve Jobs had to say:

“The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.”

When Mr. Jobs is referring to others, it’s safe to assume he’s dogging on RIM’s App World, Google’s Android Market, the Window’s Marketplace, Nokia’s Ovi store, Palm’s webOS apps, LG’s upcoming mobile storefront, and any other company that is attempting to get a piece of the mobile app store pie.

It’s true that nobody will catch up to Apple at this point in time. But there comes a point when we ask ourselves “when is enough, enough?” The App Store has way too many apps for one person to browse through. It’s like searching through a minefield sometimes looking for that perfect app.

Get Rid of Unpopular Apps and Concentrate on Quality Only

Apple needs to set an auto-remove on apps in the App Store. Say, if an app hasn’t been downloaded at least once or twice in 60 days, it should be removed. That will eradicate all the duplicate apps out there. However, the current App Store model does give major incentives to developers–they can strike it rich with the “right” app. I’m just saying let the junk apps expire if they haven’t been touched in ages.

What do you think? Too many apps? When will we see the limit?

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