Apple at the 26th annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San
Francisco made some major announcements including the all new Apple
Music service, native apps for the Apple Watch, and new versions of iOS
and OS X. In a traditional style, Apple CEO Tim Cook started the keynote
with an update on platform numbers since last year. (Also see: WWDC 2015: Apple Unveils iOS 9, Apple Music, Native Watch Apps, OS X El Capitan)
Cook revealed
that the App Store passed 100 billion app downloads since its launch in
2008, while further noting that the App Store till date has paid out
more than $30 billion to developers. The Cupertino-based company
stressed that it "continues to be the most profitable app marketplace in
the industry."
To give some context, a data-tracking firm earlier
this year claimed that Google Play had outpaced Apple's App Store in
app download
numbers, with 60 percent more app downloads than the App Store in
2014.
The Apple CEO also announced that there are 1.5 million apps
in the App Store, which might mean it is now past the number of Android
apps in Google Play. An app ranking and analytics firm had claimed earlier this year that Google's Play store in 2014 jumped ahead of
Apple's App Store in terms of the total number of apps for the first
time, with over 1.43 million apps compared to 1.21 million.
Some
of the other numbers shared by Cook during the WWDC keynote noted that
there were 83 percent users now running iOS 8; WWDC had attendees from
70 countries, and 80 percent were first time attendees.
The
company also claimed that 55 percent of Mac users are now running
Yosemite stressing that "OS X Yosemite had the fastest adoption rate of
any PC operating system in history."
Apple also announced that the
new OS X El Capitan will be available as a developer beta starting
Monday and free for worldwide download starting this fall while the iOS 9
developer beta is also available on Monday, and the public beta will be
available in July.