Mac App Store downloads reach 100 million

Over 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac App Store.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple's Mac App Store is officially a success.

The iPhone maker announced today that the store, which is available to Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Lion users, has reached 100 million application downloads. Given that success, Apple is calling the service the "fastest growing PC software store in the world."

Apple launched the Mac App Store in January as a free download for Snow Leopard users. The marketplace, like Apple's mobile App Store, allows users to sift through both free and paid programs and download them to their devices. Apple shares 70 percent of the revenue generated from paid applications with developers, and keeps the remaining 30 percent for itself.

Apple reported in October that its mobile application store is also doing well, averaging 1 billion monthly downloads of its more than 500,000 available apps. All told, over 18 billion apps have been downloaded from that store since its launch in 2008, and the company has paid out over $3 billion to developers.Just a day after the Mac App Store launched with a little over 1,000 programs, Apple announced that 1 million applications had been downloaded during its first 24 hours of availability. Since then, Apple says, the store has added "thousands" of applications.

Google's Android Market is also doing well. Last week, the search giant said that 1 billion apps are being downloaded from its store each month. So far, Android device owners have downloaded a total of 10 billions apps.