App Store sees 140 billion downloads, 106% year-over-year growth

Apple CEO Tim Cook gave a brief update on the App Store this morning at the kickoff of the iPhone press event, noting that Apple’s application marketplace has now seen 140 billion apps downloaded to date. He also touted the store’s 106% year-over-year growth over the course of the last two months – an interesting figure, but one that was not explained in more detail as to the cause.

The cause, however, is likely Pokémon Go – an outlier of an app, and one that has become one of the most popular games ever to arrive on mobile devices. The game last month passed 100 million installs, and reached over $10 million in daily revenues. Today, Apple revealed it has passed more than 500 million downloads and is coming to Apple Watch.

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Added Cook, the App Store “has seen two times as much revenue as our closest competitor,” saying its growth was “off the charts.”

He also said that the store was the most popular gaming platform in the world. Cook backed up this claim by noting that there were now 500,000 games live on the App Store.

Of course, this was all leading up to the big tease: Apple’s App Store is finally getting one of the world’s most popular gaming titles of all time, Nintendo’s Mario, via a brand-new game “Super Mario Run.”