Apple App Store apps top 2 billion; that's 6.6 million downloads per day

Apple on Monday announced that more than two billion apps have been downloaded from its App Store, far and away the largest applications store in the world.

That's about 6.6 million app downloads per day.

There are now more than 85,000 apps available to the more than 50 million iPhone and iPod touch users in 77 countries worldwide.

There are more than 125,000 developers in Apple's iPhone Developer Program.

The milestone reinforces the powerful business model Apple has created in which it sells hardware that survives and thrives from an endless stream of downloadable content, paid and free.

It also shows just how far behind Google's Android, Palm, RIM and Windows Mobile are in securing this content (and profit) pipeline.