Apple apps reach 50bn mark

More than 50 billion apps have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store — a figure which would roughly equate to around seven for every person on the planet.

Customers now download around 800 per second — or more than two billion each month, the California-based firm said.

The figures reflect the rapid expansion of a business that began some five years ago and has been fuelled by the growth of the smartphone and tablet industries.

Apple announced the milestone in a message to customers on its website.

“50 billion app downloads. It couldn’t have happened without you,” it read.

A further message offered customers “one really big thank you”.

The 50 billionth app was downloaded by American Brandon Ashmore from Ohio, Apple said.

He was awarded a 10,000 US dollars App Store gift card after downloading the word game, Say The Same Thing.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice-president of internet software and services, said: “Apple would like to thank our incredible customers and developers for topping 50 billion apps downloaded...

“We’re absolutely floored to cross this milestone in less than five years.”

The App Store opened in July 2008 with 500 apps. This figure now stands at over 850,000.

Richard Dodd, of the British Retail Consortium, said: “This is a really sharp illustration of how rapidly the ways in which customers are choosing to shop and the things that they are shopping for are developing. Certainly our research shows that shopping via mobile devices is the fastest growing part of retail and digital products are a very big growth area.

“But it is still the case that 90% of retail spending still happens in stores.”