iPhone apps: 300 million downloads in 21 weeks
Apple (AAPL) buried the news in small print at the bottom of the full-page ad that appeared Friday in the New York Times and the Wall St. Journal.
The headline said something about solving life’s dilemmas one iPhone app at a time. What it didn’t say was that the iTunes App Store this week passed two impressive milestones: 1) the 10,000-plus applications that are now available on the store, and 2) the more than 300 million apps that iPhone and iPod touch users have downloaded.
Given that the App Store opened for business only 21 weeks ago, that works out to an average of better than 2 million downloads per day.
Only Apple knows for sure what percentage of those downloads were freebies. But we do know, thanks to 148Apps’ tribute page, that the average cost of an iPhone app is $3.06, which means that the store’s total revenue so far is probably less than $1 billion. (Silicon Alley Insider estimates that it’s closer to $300 million, of which Apple takes a 30% cut.)
Still. No bad for a platform that’s less than four months old.
See also 10,000 iPhone apps – for real this time.
Thanks to CNBC’s Jim Goldman for the tip and Macworld’s Jim Dalrymple for the image.
There are so many fantastic aspects of this development, but one impressive reality is that you can get games and interesting and helpful little programs without one piece of shrink-wrap, fiberboard, or plastic, downloaded and installed just as fast as can be.
This is the new model for software distribution, and pretty soon we’ll be looking at software in a box like it is a relic from the Bronze Age.
Where did you get that “close to 300 million”? Sillicon Alley Insider estimate 50 to 100 million.
During the early days, the App Store average about $1 million/day in sales. That includes pend up demand. So, $50 to $100 million over 21 weeks (80+ days) sounds reasonable.
ex ped: Read the Alley Insider piece more carefully. They estimated gross revenue from paid apps to be $300 million and Apple’s cut somewhere between $50 and $100 million.
- Thousands crowd iPhone launch in Singapore
- Snapshot of the iPhone App Store: One year later
- Dr. LSD to Steve Jobs: How was your trip?
- Mac vs. PC: Microsoft lowers the bar to $700
- Apple, Palm seen cutting into BlackBerry sales
- Steve Jobs’ health: Where’s that SEC probe?
- iPhone wait reduced to 30 minutes in New York City
- Demand for new MacBooks outstrips supplies
- Where have all the white iPhones gone?
- Antitrust: Apple and AT&T in DOJ’s sights
- Its lovely with so many apps1 But do... More
- The App Store hits one billion downlo... More
- According to Apple, the one billionth... More
- I want to add that I have 4 laptops, ... More
- I have some ideas for great apps for ... More
- Blackberry has an appstore and has ha... More
- Ever since iPhone OS 3.0 came out a f... More
- I love my iPhone. Apps like Portfoli... More
- I consider myself one who walks betwe... More
- First off, I had a brand new PC for 8... More
Silicon Valley veterans like to joke that Steve Jobs must be surrounded by a reality distortion field; if you get too close to him, you start to believe what he's saying. Thanks to the success of the iPod, the launch of the iPhone and the renewed interest in the Mac, Apple has made believers out of millions of customers - and made a lot of investors rich. But Philip Elmer-DeWitt believes that an ounce of skepticism never hurts when writing about the company. He should know. He's been covering Apple - and watching Steve Jobs operate - since 1982, first for Time Magazine, then for Business 2.0, and now for Fortune.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InlGkFhiP9k
ex ped: Thanks! I’ve put a link to this video in a new post that also shows the fullscreen panorama somebody shot of the scene. See here.