Apple today is tooting its horn that 10 billion applications have been downloaded from its App Store.

Launched in July 2008, the App Store is a digital media repository of applications in diverse categories including games, entertainment, health, utilities, sports, weather and more.

The applications run on Apple’s popular iPhone, iPod touch devices, iPad tablet and lately the Mac as well.

Applications on the App Store come be free or paid.

Cheap desi SOBs will be glad to know that there are tons of free applications.

Here’s a time line of downloads from the App Store since its launch:

Here are a few applications we’ve downloaded from the App Store to our iPhone:

NDTV Live TV (news), Hindu Reader (news), Mastersoft (Chess), Wikipanion, Flixter (for movies), Netflix (watch full movies), Bloomberg (news), Amazon.com (shopping), AP Mobile (news), Skype (free audio and video calling), Groupon (coupons) and Facebook (social networking).

One of new favorites is the Skype application. The app lets you do audio and video calls even on the move if you have an iPhone.

The enormous popularity of the App Store is a big weakness for rival smartphone vendors like RIM (Blackberry), Nokia, the Android-based phone peddlers like Motorola, et al.

Now that the iPhone has come to Verizon as well, we’re likely to see even faster growth in downloads from App Store.