According to an unofficial report by AppsFire, Apple’s iOS App Store has hit 1 million approved apps. Other sources, such as the Next Web, have been able to independently confirm the report’s legitimacy. Apple hit this 1 million approvals milestone just over four years after launching the App Store with iPhone OS 2.0 in July of 2008. As of now, 736,247 apps are live and available to purchase in the App Store. Why the discrepancy between apps on the App Store now and the 1 million approved apps mark? Well, it’s because both Apple’s App Store team and individual developers often remove applications from the App Store due to various factors like copyright claims or simply being phased out.
AppsFire has also reported that roughly 49 percent of approved App Store apps are paid apps and just 16 percent of them are games. They’ve also said that more iOS apps are approved than rejected, though they’re unable to track specific numbers.
It’s also worth noting that there are currently 400 million iTunes accounts that have managed to download a staggering 35 billion apps per year. Tim Cook told the press during the iPhone 5 event that over 90 percent of all applications on the App Store are still actively being downloaded from month to month, and that the average iOS user has 100 applications on his or her device. In comparison, Google Play currently houses 675,000 apps that have been downloaded 25 billion times. Both Google and Apple released these stats in September of 2012.
