At the start of its iPhone OS 3.0 event today, Apple announced a collection of statistics regarding the growth of the iPhone OS X platform, including:
Over 30M Devices. Apple disclosed that 17 million iPhones and over 13 million iPod touches have been sold so far, for a total of over 30 million iPhone OS devices.
App Store Countries. Fifteen additional countries are being added as App Store countries, bringing the total to 77.
App Store Downloads. As of now, there are over 25,000 applications in the App Store, downloaded collectively over 800 million times.
App Store Approvals. The 25,000 applications represent a 96% approval rate for the total pool of submissions. Of those, 98% of approved apps received approvals in seven days or less.
Fielding questions at the end of the event, Apple executives noted that while the App Store’s submission process wasn’t perfect, the turnaround time has improved, and some of the persistent issues arise from things Apple’s team is spending a lot of time looking out for: essentially, stability issues and content that isn’t suitable for children, pornography, and profanity in titles. The company made no promise to change or improve the process further, relying instead on its commitments to enabling new functionality in the iPhone OS 3.0 software unveiled during the event.