One of the factors that leads to the App Store’s growth is the size of its installed base i.e. 40 million iPhones and iPod touches. The other could be the variety and sheer quantity of applications to choose from i.e. 65,000, according to Apple’s press release.
In a Press Release, Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO said, “The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality. With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.”
Apple's App Store has eclipsed its rivals in terms of its downloads volume, as the rate at which customers are buying the apps seems to be increasing day by day. The App Store is the most viable way for mobile developers to get their applications in front of customers. Its store is filled with programs that range from fake beer pouring apps to enterprise-grade programs from Oracle and Salesforce.
The popularity of the App Store has caused Apple's mobile rivals to launch their own solutions for letting users browse, buy, download, and install apps over the air. It may be even tougher for the competition to catch up because of the App Store's momentum, but rivals are taking different approaches to carve out their market share.
