Apple's App Store tops 15 billion downloads

Apple announced Thursday that over 15 billion applications have been downloaded from its App Store by more than 200 million Apple mobile devices users worldwide. "Thank you to all of our amazing developers who have filled it with over 425,000 of the coolest apps and to our over 200 million iOS users for surpassing 15 billion downloads," said Phillip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, in a statement. Launched on July 10, 2008, Apple's digital application distribution platform has been growing at a fast speed. It took nine months to hit one billion downloads and five billion in June 2010. In January, Apple gave a 10,000-U.S. dollar App Store gift card to a user who downloaded the 10 billionth application. In Thursday's statement, the Cupertino, California-based company said it had paid developers 2.5 billion dollars to date. Apple's mobile market place is far ahead of Google's Android Market. At its annual I/O conference in May, Google said there had been 4.5 billion app installs so far. But Google said the growth of its mobile operating system and applications is accelerating with its store hitting another billion downloads every 60 days. Currently, Apple is in a legal battle against Amazon over the use of "Appstore," which the online retailer launched in March to sell mobile applications to Google's Android platform users. On Wednesday, a federal judge denied Apple's request to immediately stop Amazon from using the term "Appstore." Meanwhile, Amazon, Microsoft, HTC, Nokia and Sony Ericsson have filed complaints against Apple in Europe, seeking to get Apple's trademarks for "App Store" and "Appstore" invalidated.