In a few hours, Apple will reach an extraordinary milestone – the download of the one billionth application from its App Store that feeds millions of hungry iPhones and iPod touch multimedia devices.

Launched in early July 2008, the App Store has been a phenomenal success with 35,000 applications and a billion downloads. As we write this post at 9:44PM ET, Apple had 995.97 million downloads from the App Store.

For Apple to reach this milestone in nine months, and that too in a recession environment when every other major digital media company is having a hard time, is just mindblowing.

On the iPhone, the App Store is a breeze to use. Just tap the App Store icon on the screen to enter into the magical world of the 35,000 applications. When an application that you have downloaded gets an update, you get an notification in the ‘Updates’ tab of the App Store on the iPhone.

The App Store applications come in a variety of categories including games, productivity, entertainment, music, health, reference, utility and news.

We have downloaded a host of applications for our iPhone both paid and free including New York Times, WSJ, AP News, Bloomberg, Panchang, India News, AOL Radio and Yelp and for the most part the apps work well.

Most App Store applications cost less than $10 and thousands are free.