Apple might not be the darling of Wall Street that it once was, but Apple fans and mobile developers are just as enthusiastic as ever. Tickets for WWDC 2013 sold out in under 3 minutes — it took just 71 seconds, in fact — and the line to get into the Moscone Center in San Francisco this morning stretched as far as the eye could see. Apple’s opening keynote is finally now underway, and CEO Tim Cook started things off by noting that Apple now has more than 6 million registered developers and 1.5 million of them have registered in the past year alone.
Cook said while on stage at WWDC that Apple now operates 407 stores in 14 countries, and more than 1 million people visit Apple Stores each day.
The Apple executive went on to note that Apple customers have now downloaded more than 50 billion apps from Apple’s digital App Stores, and there are now more than 900,000 apps in the App Stores. There are now more than 575 million accounts tied to the App Stores, and Apple has now paid out $10 billion to developers who sell apps through the App Stores, including $5 billion just in the last year — three times more than all other platforms combined.
Cook said Apple’s Mac installed base now sits at 72 million users. The Mac business has outpaced the Windows PC business for five straight years now. Apple has now shipped 28 million copies of OS X Mountain Lion, and 35% of Apple’s computer customers now use the latest version of OS X — compared to just 5% of Windows PC users who use Windows 8.
