Last Friday, Apple announced that App Store has hit the 500 million download mark in just six months. Apple also said that more than 15,000 apps were now available for download on the App Store.  Apple didn’t give any information about ratio of free versus paid apps downloaded from App Store, 500 million in six months is impressive.
Just four days after Apple launched the App Store in July 2008, the company announced that they sold 10 million apps. In October, App store reached the 200 million download mark. From October to December, the growth rate slowed a bit and App store added another 100 million downloads for a total of 300 million. But in December the app download rate increased exponentially and in just over a month Apple sold 200 million apps bringing the total to 500 million.  So it took Apple three months to sell initial 200 million apps but the recent 200 million apps were downloaded at three times the speed in just over a month.
If App store continues to grow at this speed it could reach the 1 billion download mark before May 2009. There is no doubt that App Store is one of the best features on the iPhone or iPod touch and it has become one of the biggest online application store in the world.