Apple have announced another landmark being surpassed for their flagship App Store, with customers bringing the cumulative total of downloads made from the service (since its launch in 2008) to above 40 billion downloads, close to half of which were accounted for in 2012.
The online store, featuring over 500 million members able to choose from over 775,000 apps available for portable devices (iPhone, iPad, and iPod), broke their own records last month (December 2012) with the downloads of over 2 billion items processed through the service.
Apple claim to have spent over $7b in their App Store’s history paying developers their share of the income, although with their 30-70 sales share process, it is not like the world’s largest technology company themselves are having a tough time from merely hosting these successful downloads and claiming a likely $3b+ sum over that 4-year period.
Apple’s ‘senior vice-president of internet software and services’ Eddy Cue said of the success: “It has been an incredible year for the iOS developer community. Developers have made over seven billion dollars on the App Store, and we continue to invest in providing them with the best ecosystem so they can create the most innovative apps in the world.”
2012′s most successful apps included titles such as Clash of the Clans, Dragon Vale, AirBnB, and Uber, though one of the most notable was arguably the popular game Temple Run, which earned a figure of over 75 million downloads during the year on Apple devices.
Keith Shepherd, co-founder of Temple Run developers Imangi Studios, said of the app’s popularity: “The success of our game Temple Run in 2012 was nothing short of astonishing. We were simply looking to create a game that was fun and easy to play, but once it hit the App Store, the game took off. This past year, we saw more than 75 million downloads of Temple Run on iOS.”
While that game joins the likes of Angry Birds and Cut the Rope as gaming titles that have reached multi-platform popular heights over the past few years thanks to their addictive success in app stores, will 2013 see the birth of another name added to that list, or a breakout non-gaming download?