Storefront less than a year old

(Updated with clarifications from Apple) Over 100 million downloads have now been made at the Mac App Store, Apple has announced. The online storefront has only been accessible since January of this year, and is limited to Macs running Snow Leopard or Lion. Apple is not offering a specific count of apps available, except to say there are "thousands of free and paid" titles.

Also making it difficult to judge the significance of the milestone is the critical nature of some of them. Apple currently hosts a number of major first-party apps through the Mac App Store, including OS X Lion itself. A significant portion of the 100 million figure could theoretically be represented by Apple titles. Some prominent third-party apps, such as Adobe's Creative Suite, are still sold only through other stores.

Also mentioned in Apple's press release is that the iOS App Store has surpassed 18 billion downloads. The company says it is continuing to see over 1 billion downloads per month, and the number of iPhone and iPad titles has cracked 500,000.

Update: Apple has reportedly clarified that the 100 million Mac App Store downloads don't include Lion, or updates to existing software. Also omitted are multiple installations associated with a single user.

by MacNN Staff