Apple: 500,000 apps

Cupertino responds to a Google milestone with a flurry of nice round numbers

Last Tuesday, Google (GOOG) announced that Android users had downloaded more than 10 billion apps from the Android Market and that the number of downloads was growing by 1 billion per month. To celebrate the milestone, Google was going to make a new set of "awesome apps" available on the store every day for the next week for only 10¢ each.

The week wasn't over before Apple (AAPL) had issued its own news alert. In a press release that quoted liberally from satisfied developers, Apple announced Monday that its customers had downloaded nearly twice as many apps -- 18 billion -- from the Apple App Store, and that like Google, its number was growing by 1 billion downloads per month.

Moreover, more than 100,000 apps have now been downloaded from the Mac App Store, for which there is no Google equivalent.

There will, however, be no 10¢ app sale from Apple. In fact, according to 148apps.biz, the average price of the 529,000 apps in Apple's App Store is $2.00. The most popular price on the Android Market -- by far -- is $0.00.