Holidays make consumers go app crazy

Just 53 days after announcing it had reached a major milestone of one million application downloads in its Smart TV application store, Samsung has already reached and surpassed a second: two million application downloads.

"Interest in applications on Smart TV increased at a tremendous pace during the holiday season," said Samsung in a January 17 announcement.

"When Samsung Apps reached one million downloads in November, it had been just 268 days since the store's launch. The two million-mark was reached just 53 days later."

Owners of Samsung-branded Smart TVs have been busily downloading around 100,000 applications every five days to reach the two million downloads mark in just 53 days.

There are now 380 apps on the platform which covers 120 countries across the globe.

The most downloaded apps on the platform? Sports, movies and gaming applications like YouTube, Hulu Plus, ESPN Next Level, AccuWeather, Google Maps and Texas Holdem.

Over on the small screen, iPod, iPad and iPhone owners have been even busier collecting applications for their devices.

Within the next few days Apple will announce it ten billionth App Store app download.

Apple is offering a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card to the person who downloads the 10 billionth app.

Market intelligence company Asymco reports that iOS device users are downloading more than 30 million apps per day - and that figure is steadily increasing.

In a study published on January 16, Asymco calculated that "more than 60 apps have been downloaded for every iOS device sold" - a sizable increase from fall 2008 when there were around 10 apps downloaded for ever iPhone and iPod touch sold.