By Siobhan O’Leary

Germans love their apps now more than ever. Based on data provided by the market research institute research2guidance, BITKOM [the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media] estimates that German mobile phone users will have downloaded 755 million apps by the end of 2010 — that’s a 78% increase over last year.

In the first half of 2010, around 3.9 billion apps were downloaded worldwide — a significant jump from 2009, when 3.1 billion apps were downloaded over the course of the entire year. Though smartphone users download most of their apps free of charge or at a very low price point, German sales for apps are expected to reach 343 million euros this year (which would constitute an 81% increase over 2009 and give Germany an 8% share of the market worldwide). The average price for an app is currently 2.82 euros and the Apple App Store accounted for most downloads, followed by the Android Market, Ovi Store and Blackberry App World.

There are currently about 500,000 apps available worldwide.