Getjar hits a billion downloaded apps

Less than 24 hours after Apple announced that their 100 million iPhone and iPod Touch “IOS” devices had collectively downloaded 5 billion apps, and created $1 billion dollars of revenue, app store GetJar announces their own set of records.

GetJar (www.getjar.com), is now calling itself the world’s second largest app store, and has announced that it has smashed through the 1 billion app download barrier.

Ilja Laurs, CEO and founder, GetJar comments: “We’re delighted to have reached this milestone in mobile app history. As a team, we’re dedicated to driving the app market forward through an open approach. We’ve supported over 60,000 apps from developers across all major platforms, including Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian and our open philosophy has been integral to our continued growth and the development within the industry. We’re looking forward to the next billion downloads.”

For GetJar to hit 1 billion downloads is impressive however you have to temper this with this, both GetJar and Apple hit 500 million downloads around about July 2009, however for GetJar to get an extra 500 million it’s taken a year and in the same time period Apple collected 4.5 billion downloads.

We also think that GetJar aren’t going to hold the crown of second largest apps store for too long, as Android and possibly even Ovi can’t be that far behind.

Get Jar stats for any one interested

  • The billionth download moment happened on June 7th at 11:02 AM — Geodelic, an app that discovers restaurants, retailers and attractions nearby, was downloaded on an Android handset.
  • GetJar’s app store launched on March 23, 2004 and by July 2009 that it hit half a billion downloads
  • The most downloaded “app” (a loose meaning of the word app here) is Facebook’s mobile site shortcut, which has been downloaded more than 61 million times since launch late last year.
  • The most popular app (in the true meaning of app) is mobile messenger application, eBuddy, which surpassed 50 million downloads on GetJar in June 2010. Other popular apps include social networking and messaging apps Nimbuzz, Mig33 and Cncted, a mobile web browser – Opera Mini, Google, Yahoo Mobile, and Fandango.
  • Dictionary, a simple app developed for feature phones by a sole developer in India, Vikrant Chavan, achieved over 3 million downloads since launch. Mig33 and Snaptu are also examples of small developer shops that were able to build their business and even get funding, partially due to their explosive growth on GetJar.