Mobile app developer and analysis firm asymco predicts that downloads via Apple’s App Store will exceed downloads from its iTunes music store by the end of 2010.
asymco has been blogging around Apple quite a lot recently, and this week they’ve highlighted an interesting little stat. Asymco have noted that Apple’s recent announcement that the App Store has reached 6.5 billion downloads means that the store has reached the same total downloads in 2.2 years (26 months) that iTunes took five years to achieve (see graph below showing downloads indexed to the same launch date).
This growth pattern suggests that both stores will hit around 13 billion downloads before the year is over with App Store downloads expected to exceed iTunes music downloads shortly after.
According to asymco, the average App Store download costs US$0.29 compared to US$1.26 for music track downloads via iTunes. But asymco claims that slowing growth in Apple’s music download business is being more than offset by the growth in apps.
asymco have also had their pocket calculators out and worked out that Apple spends around US$1.8 billion this year* and could hit US$2 billion by its third year. This is twice what Apple CEO Steve Jobs predicted when the store launched in 2008 when he said the business would be a “US$1 billion marketplace at some point in time.”
*based on 17 million downloads a day at US$0.29 each
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