Apple Q4 2014: App Store Downloads Top 85 Million

Sales are great, but we really like to know about device use. You can sell as many devices as you like, but if nobody uses them, it's a short-term gain. Apple is great on both ends of that spectrum, and have announced their total App Store downloads, and they're pretty surprising. Compared to this time last year, cumulative apps sold has a nearly 50% increase. That's pretty significant for a single year, considering the App stores have been around for years.

Apple says cumulative app store downloads have topped 85 billion, up from 60 billion they reported last year. In a single year, Apple users loaded 25 billion more apps. That's pretty amazing, really, considering their previous total.

To wit, we can also look to the increase in number of apps as reason for the uptick. At their iPhone event this September, Apple noted they now had 1.3 million apps available, which was about 100,000 more than they bragged up at WWDC this year.

The increased access Developers have will only see this number move upward, too. In just keyboards and the ability to add widgets, Developers have seen a lot of reason for users to want their apps.

App Store revenue was also up 36% over last year, according to Apple. Sales generated were at $5.4 billion this quarter via iTunes, and registered Developers went up 22%. No signs of stopping or even slowing down from Apple today.