Apple’s App Store has passed the milestone of 15 billion mark stimulated with over 200 million iOS device users from 90 countries, the company announced. This figure gives a round figure of 75 downloads per user. The iPad and iPhone markers claims of over 425, 000 apps in iOS store which s inclusive of more than 100, 000 native iPad apps. Number of iPad apps has increased from 90,000 apps meant for tablets as mentioned by Steve Jobs, company’s CEO at Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple says, iOS developers are paid more than $2.5 billion. Analyst house Gartner also forecasted than in 2011 total mobile app store downloads would reach up to 17.7 billion from 8.2 million in 2010.

This news of App Store having more than 420, 000 apps came when Apple itself made an announcement in a press release. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing said that App Store has grown enormously in last three years making it the most successful software marketplace that one can imagine. Such a large number of Apple apps downloads clearly signifies the popularity of apps and free apps. Total revenue from apps of App Store is much higher than what $2.5 billion which is paid to the app developers.

While estimating a number of downloads which user purchases and free apps, free apps are used by 200 million more users than the paid ones. Here Apple’s advertising plays a prominent role which was projected to be about $399 million for 2010 and analysts expected it to be $8 billion by year 2015. With amazing success of App Store, it is crystal clear that users enjoy these apps and that users spend time in finding apps to download rather than just downloading the top rated apps and never returning to the store again. Developers will still keep on finding a lot more exciting stuff to run on iOS devices.