Apple tops 1bn App Store sales

The company said on Friday that it had reached the milestone when a 13 year-old from Connecticut made a download.

The App Store service was first developed to allow the company to control the sale of 3rd party software for the iPhone and iPod touch as well as give developers a single marketplace to distribute their software.

Apple estimates that the store now offers more than 35,000 applications and is available in 77 countries. The App Store reached the download milestone much faster than its namesake iTunes music store, which took nearly three years to serve up its billionth download.

"The revolutionary App Store has been a phenomenal hit with iPhone and iPod touch users around the world, and we’d like to thank our customers and developers for helping us achieve the astonishing milestone of one billion apps downloaded," Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller said in a statement.

The user who downloaded the billionth piece of software, 13 year-old Connor Mulcahey, will be given a $10,000 gift card for the store along with a new MacBook Pro, a Time Capsule backup drive and an iPod Touch.