Apple Highlights 5 Years Of The App Store For iOS

[ReadWrite]

Later this week, Apple's App Store for iOS officially turn five years old. The App Store grew from a curiosity in 2008 to one of the dominant destinations to download software in a few years and now contains more than 900,000 apps that have seen more than 50 billion downloads.

Yes, there is indeed an app for that. Probably several.

To celebrate five years of the App Store, Apple is giving away some apps for the occasion. Five iOS apps and five games are currently free in the App Store for a limited time.

Free apps include: Barefoot World Atlas, Day One (Journal/Diary), How To Cook Everything, Over (a photo editing app) and Traktor DJ for iPhone (an audio-mixing app).

Free games include: Where's My Water, Tiny Wings, Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery, Infinity Blade II and Badland.

If you are an avid App Store user, there is a good chance you have already used several of these apps, especially the games.

Marking App Store Milestones    

In addition to pushing the free versions of normally paid apps, Apple notes the milestones that the App Store has achieved along the way. In 2013, the App Store passed 50 billion downloads, passed the $10 billion mark of money paid to developers and officially turns five years old on July 10th.

 

If you are counting (and a lot of people are), Apple went from 25 billion apps downloaded to 50 billion in about 14 months. More than two billion apps were downloaded in December 2012 alone.

The milestones and free apps were first rolled out to users in Europe this morning before coming to the United States.

What has been your favorite app from the App Store over the last five years? Let us know in the comments.

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[ReadWrite]