Saturday 10th July 2010 marked the second birthday of Apple’s App Store and what a spectacular couple of years it’s been for the digital application marketplace.

When the App Store was first launched, back in July 2008, it offered a somewhat paltry selection of 500 downloadable apps. Two years on, however, and that number is somewhat bigger! As of 7th July 2010, there were 225,000 different apps available for download from the App Store and there have been more than 5 billion downloads from the marketplace in total.

That’s pretty impressive and certainly keeps Apple ahead of the competition in the App Store stakes (for the time being, at least).

With the recent launch of the iPad and the even more recent iPhone 4 launch, the number of developers developing for Apple devices looks set only to rise. The speed at which the number of available apps grows is immense and the selection now spans everything from sat nav systems, to games and utilities.

So it’s anyone’s guess as to what the stats might read like this time next year when we’re wishing the App Store a happy 3rd birthday!