It was only a short while ago the App Store surpassed 30,000 available applications and now another huge milestone approaches, an amazing 1 billion downloaded Apps! It also looks likely this will be achieved within a year of the App Store being open and according to records, iTunes was up and running for more than double this time before it sold a billion songs. Even when you take into account the increased amount of free Apps, this is still very impressive.

As with iTunes, the downloader of the 1 billionth App will win a variety of Apple products, so make sure you check the official Apple countdown to be in with a chance of winning this rather special prize!

Also in celebration of this event, Apple have released a list of the top 20 free and paid-for Apps. There is some discrepancy over the placement of Tap Tap Revenge, which has frequently been placed at the top of top-downloaded App lists, and despite the fact no actual numbers have been included to give a more precise idea of just how popular these are, the list represents a great overview of what everyone should have on their iPhone or iPod Touch.

Top 20 Paid Apps

Top 20 Free Apps

Interesting results, certainly and a surprise not to see a Twitter application or even Skype make the list! It's also important to note that the European iTunes store has a different set of top 20 Apps to the US store and also different positions for Apps shared across the listing, so we have included the alternatives above.