Following Google’s announcement last week that the Android Market had reached an impressive 10 billion downloads, Apple has clearly decided that it’s time to remind everyone who did this App Store thing first. The company has announced that not only does it have 500,000 different apps available in its App Store, but that it has reached 18 billion downloads since launching three years ago. Expect new records to be announced very soon, as Apple also estimates that monthly downloads from the App Store for iOS devices are over one billion, so we’re potentially only seven months away from the 25 billionth download. Somewhere, someone in Google is working out how quickly it can speed up its own app downloads in order to win this particular app store cold war milestone.
Graeme McMillan is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @Graemem or on Facebook at Facebook/Graeme.McMillan. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.
