Apple App Store has a record December, hits 40-billion all time downloads

Well, Apple had a good festive season. The company announced today that it had a record-breaking December, with more than two billion iOS apps downloaded from its App Store. The last month rounded out a nice 2012 for Apple: it hit a record 40-billion app downloads, and just under 20-billion of those were from last year.

Yes, we’re talking unique downloads here: those figures exclude re-downloads and updates from Apple’s 500-million active account holders. It also took the opportunity to reveal that there are over 775 000 apps for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users worldwide — although the Store only has 300 000 native apps for iPad. Still, it’s a significant step up (in quantity, at least) from the Windows Phone Store’s 150 000 apps and just ahead of the Google Play Store’s most recently reported figure, 675 000 apps (but only 25-billion downloads).

The teams behind those apps have been making a some cash from all those downloads too — Apple says it has paid out over over US$7-billion to app developers so far.