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The Google, Research In Motion, Palm/HP, and Microsoft app stores are all playing catch up with Apple, which just celebrated a major app download milestone, but without making one specific change, there's slim chance these competitors will narrow the gap.

Apple's iPhone App Store launched in July 2008. In just over two and a half years, iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad users have downloaded 10,000,000,000 applications for their iOS devices. The actual 10 billionth app downloaded is called Paper Glider and was purchased by Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, U.K. Davis won a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

The statistics for Apple's App Store are staggering. Apple claims that there are 160 million users of iOS devices. That means the average customer has downloaded about 62 applications. At the current rate, iOS users are downloading 206 apps every second, 12,360 per minute, 741,600 per hour, and 17.8 million apps per day.

"With more than. Seven billion apps [downloaded] in the last year alone. The App Store has surpassed our wildest dreams," said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing in a prepared statement. "The App Store has revolutionized how software is created, distributed, discovered, and sold. While others try to copy the App Store, it continues to offer developers and customers the most innovative experience on the planet."

Apple says that the App Store has more than 350,000 applications buried inside it, with more than 60,000 dedicated to just the iPad. But what of the App Store's competitors? Google, Research In Motion, Palm/HP, and Microsoft each run their own app stores for their respective smartphone platforms. Do any of them have even the slightest hope of matching Apple's achievements?

Source: informationweek