Speaking to the Wall Street Journal today, Steve Jobs announced that Apple"s AppStore is doing very well indeed, totting up some 60 million downloads from the site so far.
In monetary terms, the downloads come to around $45 million, with the revenue of the downloads split between Apple and the app developers 30/70. If this continues, Apple stands to bank at least $360 million a year in new revenue from the AppStore.
"Who knows, maybe it will be a $1 billion marketplace at some point in time," said Jobs in the interview. "I"ve never seen anything like this in my career for software."
Something that also came out in the interview is that Jobs has the ability to get rid of any undesirable software from the iPhone, as code embedded in every handset routinely checks Apple"s website, theoretically feeding back info about what is on the phone to Apple.
Speaking about this, Jobs does say that even though the technology exists, it is merely there as a precaution, cryptically stating: "Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull."