Public loves apps more than burgers

There’s no doubt that mobile apps have proved to be a runaway success. Early in July Apple announced 15 billion downloads since it first opened the App Store in 2008 and Google is hot on its heels. But what yardstick should we use to really quantify this growth? As it’s silly season, software firm Sybase 365 chose hamburgers.

According to some number crunching done by Sybase, which develops information management, m-commerce and messaging tools, it took McDonald’s almost 26 years to sell 15 billion burgers and about 46 years to hit 100 billion. The fast food restaurant stopped updating its road signs in 1994, just before it hit 100 billion, to read “Billions and billions sold”.

Using McDonald’s as the “Gold Standard for Incredible Growth,” Sybase works out that Apple hit the 15 billion mark about nine times faster than McDonald’s. And based on the company’s projections, Apple could hit 100 billion apps downloaded within five and a half years, again nine times faster that McDonald’s.

Yet Google, which is expected to hit 15 billion apps in October of this year, might hit the magic 100 billion as early as April 2012. “The gap between Google and Apple and the rest of the market appears to be widening, not narrowing,” Sybase said.

apps-v-burgers