Amidst the turbulent news surrounding the future of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM), the company had a glimmer of good news for users. The mobile handset-maker announced that their app store, BlackBerry App World, has reached 3-billion downloads.
“BlackBerry smartphone and PlayBook users around the world have downloaded over three billion apps since BlackBerry App World launched. Three billion app downloads averages out to over 2.5 million downloads each day. What’s even more important – and impressive – is that the number of daily downloads continues to increase,” wrote Victoria B on Inside BlackBerry Developer Blog.
For BlackBerry to reach the first billion milestone, it took 786 days, while it only took 210 to reach 2-billion. The period between 2-billion and 3-billion shrunk by almost 40 days, as it only took 176 days to reach the new milestone.
It took 786 days to reach the one billion mark, 210 days to reach two billion, and only 176 days to reach the three billion number.
“Special thanks is due to the over 28,000 BlackBerry App World vendors and the BlackBerry App World storefront team. BlackBerry App World has continued to grow steadily with more than 90,000 applications now up for sale. We know other platforms use other metrics like submitted, or approved, but we prefer the more tangible ‘up for sale’,” she concluded.
As a comparison, Apple’s iOS App store contains 650 000 iOS apps, which have collectively been downloaded more than 30 billion times. Google’s Android marketplace, Google Play, crossed the 15-billion download mark in April this year.
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
