Never to be outdone by Google, which announced yesterday that it had passed 48bn downloads, Apple has revealed on its website that it has now surpassed 50bn app installs.

The company said it had reached 40bn back in January, showing that 10bn alone has been downloaded within the last five months – greater than 78m daily. The Android figure, mentioned during Google’s I/O conference yesterday, was reached after 2.5bn downloads were made within the last two months – a rather slower growth rate despite more handsets getting used worldwide. At that rate Google should pass the identical mark in a number of month’s time.

The platforms will then be going head-to-head to achieve the dizzying 100bn downloads figure.