Apple launched its Mac App Store at the beginning of this year, with this desktop-centric version of the company’s successful App Store that is used for its iOS-powered mobile devices, surpassing the million app download mark on the first day of its availability.

Now the Cupertino-based tech firm has revealed that more than 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac App Store in less than one year. The store boasts thousands of free as well as paid apps that Mac computer users can purchase via their iTunes account to download and install.

The desktop version of the App Store still has some ways to go before it can catch up to the iOS App Store, which now sports over 500 000 apps for the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad with customers having already downloaded north of 18 billion apps at the rate of more than a billion per month.

“In just three years the App Store changed how people get mobile apps, and now the Mac App Store is changing the traditional PC software industry,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world.”

 

In related news Google also recently crossed the 10 billion app download mark for apps download from its Android Market.