• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, July 14, 2009

Apple announced today that 1.5 billion applications had been downloaded for the iPhone and iPod touch in the year since it launched the App Store. It now boasts more than 65,000 apps and more than 100,000 developers for the iPhone.

"The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs, in a statement. "With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up." Good to see Jobs didn't lose his taste for taunting competitors while he was on leave.

But Apple's head start with the App Store certainly hasn't stopped other smartphone makers and wireless providers from launching their own app storefronts in response. Research in Motion, Google, Microsoft, Nokia and Verizon Wireless, among others, have all opened or announced rival app stores this year. Apple created a new kind of consumer market with the App Store and now everyone's jumping in.

Nokia showed it's not so easy to imitate Apple's success when it stumbled out of the gate in May with the launch of its Ovi Store, which suffered from technical glitches and thin app selection that led to a PR disaster. But others, like Google's Android Marketplace and RIM's BlackBerry World, have rolled out with less incident and now offer about 5,000 and 2,000 apps, respectively.

Last month, Palm's Pre App Catalog hit 1 million downloads in less than three weeks after the smartphone's launch. Sure, Jobs would scoff at these paltry figures, but they're a start. Competing storefronts don't have to eclipse the App Store's 1.5 billion downloads or 65,000-app inventory to succeed, they just have to offer a credible alternative.

The most important number for other smartphone makers might be the 100,000 developers the iPhone has attracted. Newer app shops need developers to be able to stock their shelves with products people want to buy, or at least download. It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg question-app stores can't draw customers without worthwhile apps, but developers won't be eager to create apps for a store no one's going to.

To help entice consumers at the outset, Microsoft has already announced lining up development partners like EA Mobile, Facebook, Pandora and Gameloft before its Windows Marketplace for Mobile has even launched. It will open with 600 apps overall. Yes, a long, long way to catch up with the App Store. But Apple wasn't the first company to come out with a portable music player, and the iPod has done pretty well.