Less than three years after Apple"s iTunes began releasing applications for its iPhone, iPod Touch and later iPad devices, the iTunes store has now offered up over 500,000 iOS apps for download (both free and paid) for the US market. The milestone, according to CNN Money"s web site, was achieved after midnight on Tuesday when Apple released a number of new apps for download. The iTunes App Store first launched on July 10, 2008 with just 500 apps. The actual number of iOS apps currently available to download is about 400,000, according to the article, due to replacing older apps and the withdrawal of others. The article states that as of January 2011, over 10 billion iOS apps have been downloaded from the app store.
Releasing 500,000 of anything is something to celebrate, at least according to three companies. iOS game developer Chillingo has teamed up with the search company Chomp and the mobile app blog site 148apps to release a massive chart of info that includes a timeline and tons of facts about the iTunes App Store"s history. Among the facts on the chart is that games make up the most iOS apps at 15 percent, followed by books at 14 percent and general entertainment apps at 11 percent.
More facts from the chart: 37 percent of all iOS apps are free to download. If you actually buy an app, the average price is $3.64. There are also over 85,000 unique developers that have apps on sale on the App Store.