Perhaps not unexpected as the number of iDevices continues to grows -  now over 50 million - Apple has announced the App Store has served up two billion downloads since its launch on 10 July 2008.

"The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO.

"The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it."

The App Store is now live in 77 countries and hosts over 85,000 applications from over 125,000 licensed developers.

Doing some basic maths from Apple's announcements about the first billion downloads (April 23) and then the speed to 1.5 billion (July 2009), the pace of downloads is rising fast.

Clocking up almost 5 million per day over that entire period, the last 500 million downloads have occurred at a daily download rate of over 10 million per day.

Wonder how many of them are free though?