Apple's App Store boasts over 100,000 applications

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- Apple Inc. on Wednesday announced that over 100,000 applications now are available in its App Store, an online service for the company's iPhone and iPod touch media player.

"The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world," Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said in a statement.

Following the success of Apple's App Store, other mobile platform vendors such as Google and Research In Motion (RIM) have launched similar services, through which individual developers can promote applications they build specifically for each platform while consumers can choose from thousands of applications tailored for their needs.

New numbers of applications and downloads showed the popularity of Apple's service, largest of its kind in the world, among developers and users.

Over two billion applications have been downloaded from the App Store since it opened in July last year, "continuing to make it the world's most popular applications store," Apple said.

According to Apple, its App Store now