LONDON GetJar, the world's largest independent mobile app store, is now generating more than three million downloads a day, continuing its fast-paced upward trajectory.

Last month the Lithuania-based company hit one billion app downloads and, more significant to the company's future, secured $11m in a second round of funding from venture capital firm Accel Partners.

Unlike Apple's App Store, the world's largest mobile app marketplace, GetJar hosts applications for a number of platforms and devices, all free of charge. It is currently the second largest app store, ahead of Nokia's Ovi Store and the Android Market.

Apple's App Store hit the two billion downloads mark way back in September last year just over a year after its launch. GetJar's rise has been much less meteoric - the four-year-old open-market store reaching one billion downloads last month.

Patrick Mork, GetJar's chief marketing officer, offers an insight into the patterns starting to emerge as the downloads clock up “Android wasn't even a part of our business last year. Today, it's the second most popular platform developers are submitting on when uploading content to GetJar and we have at least three devices in our top 20 list of devices in the US that are Android-powered.

“We see Indian consumers downloading more productivity applications that enhance the usage of their phone compared to Americans, for example. And English consumers downloading more entertainment apps than Indians. Religious apps are popular in the Middle East.”

A report by telecoms analysis firm Juniper Research released last week predicted that more than 25bn “consumer-oriented handset downloads” would be downloaded in 2015.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service