Apps sales soar to $1m a day at Apple store

Apple's chief executive, Steve Jobs, is hailing the creation of another giant technology business as users of the company's iPhone are downloading $1m-worth of programs (£525,000) for the device every day.

In the month since Apple opened the App Store, to sell games and other special features which it calls applications, 60 million programs have been downloaded. The App Store adds an extra feature to the phenomenally successful iPhone. Already a mobile phone, a digital music player and a camera, it is also becoming a mini-gaming console.

Apps range from sophisticated games such as motor racing and Sega's Super Monkeyball to silly features such as one allowing users to turn the phone into a simulated Star Wars lightsabre.

Apple last week removed an app called I Am Rich, which cost $999 and did nothing. Yesterday, it was revealed it has also banned an app that played the shower scene music from Psycho when users made a stabbing motion with the iPhone. The private software developers of the apps keep 70 per cent of the revenue.

While Mr Jobs said that Apple stands to earn at least $360m a year from its cut of the revenues, analysts are divided about whether that pace is likely to be maintained.

"This thing's going to crest a half a billion dollars soon," Mr Jobs told the Wall Street Journal.