Apple announced Monday that its iOS App Store has reached a milestone 25 billion downloads.

Chunli Fu of Qingdao, China initiated the download — the free version of the “Where’s my Water?” puzzle game — and won a $10,000 iTunes card for his history-making click.

In a press release, Apple senior vice president Eddie Cue said, “When we launched the App Store less than four years ago, we never imagined that mobile apps would become the phenomenon they have, or that developers would create such an incredible selection of apps for iOS users.”

Indeed, app download numbers are soaring. Apple’s nearly doubled its numbers since early July when the App Store hit the 15 billion download mark (to put this in perspective, Google’s Android Market passed 10 billion app downloads in early December). all its success notwithstanding, Apple recently acquired app search startup Chomp, which should help make navigating through and discovering new apps in the App Store more streamlined and effective.

In addition to announcing its 25th billion download, Apple reported Monday that there are 550,000 total apps in the App Store, 170,000 of which are optimized for the iPad. What’s more, there are now more than 315 million iOS devices across the globe. We’ll no doubt hear these figures, or perhaps slightly updated numbers, at Apple’s upcoming media event on Wednesday.

Apple’s App Store Reaches 25 Billion Global Downloads

The iPhone thus far seems to be the most preferred and widely used device. any productive app on this device seems to be welcomed with red carpet. as technology keeps showing its might, one wonders ‘what on Earth can the mobile apps not perform for its master’. very soon the answer would be ‘NONE’. And to justify this, here is yet another task the iPhone apps can perform for you – they can translate languages for you.here is the list of the top apps that can make your life in …

Rocking iPhone Apps that can translate for you

as those of you using the free TUAW iPhone app in iOS 5 have already seen, there are a few issues with it; missing buttons, some broken functionality, et cetera. while we were expecting that the AOL team handling mobile development for us & all our sister sites would have an update ready for the iOS 5 release, that didn’t happen. I was told that as of October 28, an update would be submitted to Apple. AOL has a QA process for mobile apps, and several bugs popped up once iOS 5 hit.

I did receive a new build to test on Thursday, and I’m happy to report it works well with iOS 5. that said, I do not yet know if the latest version of our app has been submitted for App Store review. therefore, on Monday, October 31, I will ask our mobile team to provide me with an update and ETA for a properly-functioning iPhone app (noting that Apple’s review process is obviously outside our control).

if the word is still “we hope to submit it this week,” I will most likely pull the current app from the store so that no more new users will be wondering why an Apple blog’s iOS app doesn’t work. I’m hoping not to have to do this, as it won’t do anything for the existing users who are frustrated and unhappy; I can only tell you that I’m just as frustrated and unhappy as you are, possibly more so.

Also, if you’re wondering about an iPad app, you should check out Engadget’s Distro app. would you like this same treatment for TUAW? I have watched Distro in development, and while I think it’s a cool way to skin the site into a magazine-like format, I still feel that it lacks some of the filtering and sorting tools our users would expect. that said, I also realize it is almost 2012 and we still don’t have an iPad app, although our site works perfectly well in Mobile Safari.

Just as with our iPhone app, we must rely upon the mobile development team within AOL, and that team doesn’t exactly have TUAW at the top of its priority list (we’re sort of the pinky toe of the AOL content universe). if and when we’re able to put TUAW into something like Distro, I’ll be the first to let you know.

thanks to everyone who sent in bug reports. I hope to have better news for you in November. in the meanwhile, I would encourage you to check out our site in Mobile Safari. Unlike when we used to call iOS “iPhone OS,” the latest version of Safari in iOS doesn’t crash miserably when loading TUAW. those were good times, weren’t they?

By the way, if you’re wondering why our app has a 17+ rating, that’s because Apple requires it on any app which allows you to “go” to the full web within the app (the theory being you’ll go from TUAW to some inappropriate site — Apple can be weird this way). So if we remove that option, we can lower the age limit. unfortunately, that option is very handy sometimes. Let me know in the comments if you’d rather we ditch our web view in exchange for lowering the age limit.

my apologies for the bugs, the lack of communication and lack of an iPad app. we hope to fix things soon.

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iOS 5 and the TUAW iPhone app