Earlier today, we reported that VideoLAN was looking into the possibility of porting their popular free media player VLC for the Metro version of Windows 8. As it turned out, the group announced on Wednesday that VLC has now been downloaded over 1 billion times from the company"s servers since 2005.
In fact the total numbers for downloads and distribution for VLC may be much higher, since the program actually started development several years before 2005. In addition, as VideoLAN spokesperson Jean-Baptiste Kempf told Neowin, "How do you count download.com and other websites? How do you count all the malware sites distributing VLC? How do you count Linux distributions? How do you count DVDs from magazines with VLC on it?"
The VideoLAN VLC download number page shows that the number of VLC downloads over the years is dominated by the Windows version with over 89 percent of all downloads. Mac versions are next with just over 10 percent of VLC downloads. Linux and other downloads of VLC are listed at below 1 percent.
A VLC version for Android devices is in the works but there"s no further information available. An iOS port was released but it was later pulled by Apple from the iOS App Store.