<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"&amp;lt;vc&amp;gt;&amp;lt;strong&amp;gt;Apple on Saturday announced that its iOS App Store for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad has reached the milestone of 10 billion downloads since its launch in 2008.&amp;lt;/strong&amp;gt;\r\n\r\n\"Thank you. Ten billion times,\" Apple's &amp;lt;a href=\"http://www.apple.com/itunes/10-billion-app-countdown/\"&amp;gt;official countdown&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; was changed to read. \"The 10 Billion App Countdown promotion has ended. Please come back to this page later to see who won.\"\r\n\r\nThe company began a &amp;lt;a href=\"http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/14/apple_begins_countdown_to_10_billion_app_store_downloads.html\"&amp;gt;countdown to 10 billion&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; downloads on Jan. 14, when there were about 250 million downloads to go. It ran a promotion in which the 10 billionth downloader will win an iTunes gift card valued at $10,000 U.S.\r\n\r\nDownloads from the App Store have grown at an exponential rate. It was in January of 2010 that Apple announced total App Store downloads had &amp;lt;a href=\"http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/01/05/apple_announces_app_store_downloads_top_3_billion.html\"&amp;gt;topped 3 billion&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; in the digital download destination's first year and a half.\r\n\r\nBut in the last year, the number of App Store downloads has more than tripled, with nearly 7 billion downloads in the last year alone. For comparison, in its first year, the App Store reached &amp;lt;a href=\"http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/07/14/apples_app_store_more_than_1_5_billion_served.html\"&amp;gt;1.5 billion downloads&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;.\r\n\r\n&amp;lt;div align=\"center\"&amp;gt;&amp;lt;img src=\"http://photos.appleinsider.com/appstore-110122.png\" border=\"0\" width=\"800\" height=\"446\" alt=\"App Store\" /&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/div&amp;gt;\r\n\r\nThere are more than 300,000 applications available on the App Store for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. And Apple revealed this week that it has sold &amp;lt;a href=\"http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/18/apple_has_sold_160m_ios_devices_average_iphone_price_grows_to_625.html\"&amp;gt;160 million&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt; iOS devices.\r\n\r\nThe App Store originally debuted on the iPhone and iPod touch, but last year it was &amp;lt;a href=\"http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/04/01/apple_makes_ipad_app_store_software_accessible_through_itunes.html\"&amp;gt;extended to the iPad&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;. In addition, this month Apple launched a spin-off of its popular iOS downloading service for the Mac, dubbed the &amp;lt;a href=\"http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/06/first_look_apples_mac_app_store_simplifies_buying_updating_software.html\"&amp;gt;Mac App Store&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/22/apple_reaches_10_billion_downloads_on_the_ios_app_store.html>