Apple Hits 50 Billion App Downloads

Apple Hits 50 Billion App Downloads


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Although this speaks to the activity of the community, this is a rather useless metric. How did Apple measure this? If I own 3 different devices and download the same app on each device, did that count as 3 downloads? What about the longevity of the installs? The article makes the case that the value works out to about 89 apps per device. Really? I get the feeling that overestimates the number of downloaded apps on each device. Most people I know who have iOS devices have nowhere near that rather statistically problematic average.

I don't want to take away from that number - it's impressive in and of of itself. I just don't think it actually says much.

vansmith said:

Most people I know who have iOS devices have nowhere near that rather statistically problematic average.

I don't want to take away from that number - it's impressive in and of of itself. I just don't think it actually says much.

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I looked through quite a few Twitter Twits last night after @iTunes asked what number of Apps do you have, and i saw nothing under 150 and the most i saw from one male (to me sounded like he was trying to impress) and he came back with a number of 2134 or something like that.
To me that seems ridiculous, but myself, just looking at my count, and think this includes my 9Yr old sons purchase's (i paid for them though) lol but i have 772 at this count.
Now i don't by any means use ALL of these. I started my account back in 2008 when i had a iPod Touch and i bought just games back then, then over the years iPhone, and now my iPad Mini.
On both devices i keep probably 10 games, and everything else is either Reference, Productivity, Utility Music and Photography. More so on my iPad i now have a App for just about everything i do on my Mac i can do on my iPad.

I know its a high number, but interests come and go, so, so do my Apps

TattooedMac said:

To me that seems ridiculous, but myself, just looking at my count, and think this includes my 9Yr old sons purchase's (i paid for them though) lol but i have 772 at this count. Now i don't by any means use ALL of these.

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I might be the odd man out here in associating with people who keep app counts down. Regardless, I think you've just pointed to why I think Apple making a deal out of this is useless (just as Google pushing their figure of 48 billion is just as meaningless) - there's a big difference between downloads and actual usage patterns. I like to think of it this way. I own four mobile phones (expired and upgraded contracts are to thank for most of those) yet I only use one. Sure, I own multiple phones but there's a difference between owning them and using them. Applied to apps, there's a similar logic - there's a difference between owning them and actually using them. If I download an app once, try it and never use it again (which I've done many times), that gets counted but doesn't actually say anything about my use of the device or how much I like it.