Apple App Store to reach 50 billion downloads

There's an app for that. It's a phrase that we all know and by the end of the day, the 50 billionth app will be downloaded from the Apple app store.

A recent Forbes article broke down the growth of the app store over the last few years. The 10 billionth app download happened in January of 2011 and it took nearly 14 months for the App Store to reach 25 billion. That was rate of just over one billion downloads a month, though it was 50 percent higher in 2012, and 35 billion happened in October of last year. Since then, the rate of download has reach nearly 2.5 billion per month.

"While some of that is a function of the 85 million iPhones and 43 million iPads sold in the past two quarters, it also suggests the average Apple device user is downloading more than ever," the article reads. "That helps [explain] why Apple users keep reporting in surveys the next device they are likely to buy is another one from Apple: They are locked in through their loyalty to a lot of apps."

USA Today looked at the top apps download of all time, and while it may be no surprise that the iPhone is dominated by social media and games like the various Angry Birds installments, Instagram and Facebook, the iPad has a few more productivity apps and paid list is topped by the word processing program Pages. Other business​-realm apps like Keynote, Numbers GarageBand and Quickoffice Pro have a place in the top 25 apps of all time for the iPad.

With this many apps available, it is only a matter of time before the right combination can be found that will help your business. Partnering with an IT consultant who is familiar with an iPad deployment can go a long way toward making the mobile device a standard business tool.