Apple has announced that customers have downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications in just one year from their Apple online application store with several major vendors now trying to copy the success of Apple.

“The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.”

The revolutionary App Store has more than 65,000 apps available to consumers in 77 countries, allowing developers to reach tens of millions of iPhone and iPod touch users around the world. The App Store works with both iPod touch and iPhone including the new iPhone 3GS, the fastest, most powerful iPhone yet. Apple has shipped over 40 million of these devices that run apps from the App Store.