Apple has announced this morning that app downloads through the Mac App Store have cleared the 100 million mark in less than one year of operation – an impressive milestone indeed. Apple’s App Stores for the Mac and iOS have more than 500,000 apps available.
Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller stated the following:
“In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world.”
A press release from Apple includes comments from numerous developers and companies who have had success with applications they have sold through the Mac App Store, which debuted in January.
Amar Hanspal, senior vice president of Platform Solutions and Emerging Business at Autodesk:
“With Autodesk products in both the App Store and Mac App Store, we can reach hundreds of millions of Apple users around the world, with our free AutoCAD WS and the more powerful professional drafting tools of AutoCAD LT, we’re using the Mac App Store to deliver new products and reach a growing base of new Mac customers.”
Saulius Dailide of the Pixelmator Team:
The Mac App Store has unparalleled reach and has completely transformed our distribution and development cycle, offering Pixelmator 2.0 exclusively on the Mac App Store allows us to streamline updates to our image editing software and stay ahead of the competition.”
The Mac App Store has been a big part of Apple’s push for an all-download strategy for software distribution, which has allowed the company to remove DVD drives from a good portion of their Mac lineup.
The focus on digital distribution has also allowed them to discontinue boxed software from its retail stores, where employees are now instructing customers to purchase software online through the Mac App Store.
