Apple Offers ‘Amazing, Groundbreaking’ Apps & Games Free Today

As part of celebrating 5 years of the App Store Apple is offeringup 10 ‘amazing, groundbreaking’ apps for free for a limited time. As you can see above these include some flagship iOS games like Infinity Blade II and Where’s My Water and some impressive apps like Day One and Over.

This is quite an interesting promotion – since none of these are Apple’s own apps or games. The App Store’s 5th anniversary is Wednesday, July 10 – and on the same page as the apps promotion Apple highlights a timeline of milestones in the store’s history.

The Milestones section is fun to browse through – with lots of crazy, huge numbers, dates when some flagship apps were launched or featured in the App Store, and more.  Here are a few of these milestones that caught my eye:

July 14, 2008: 10 Million apps downloaded in the first weekend the App Store is open

September 9, 2008: 100 million downloads reached

January 16, 2009: App downloads top 500 million worldwide

April 4, 2009: And less than 3 months later, App Store downloads top 1 billion.

April3,2010: iPad goes on sale

April 30, 2010: TIME Magazine launches on iPad

June 7, 2010: App Store downloads top 5 billion worldwide. 11,000 apps designed for iPad available.

January 22,2011: App Store downloads top 10 billion.

March 2, 2011: 65,000 iPad apps available.

October 10, 2011: Facebook iPad app released and Facebook becomes first app to be downloaded 100 million times.

March 5,2012: 25 billion App Store downloads.

May 16, 2013: App Store downloads pass the 50 billion mark. Over 350,000 iPad apps available.

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Not too shabby for 5 years. I’m sure we’ll see more great apps going free or on sale to mark the 5th anniversary of the App Store. Maybe Apple could even join in and include some of their paid apps.