Meizu’s Flyme Store Hits 100 Million App Downloads, Looks Towards a Billion

Chinese phone-maker Meizu has today announced that 100 million apps have been downloaded from its own Flyme store for Android apps. The lucky downloader – one Mao Zeying from Tianjin who snagged the QQ IM app at the opportune time – will get a prize of 10,000 RMB (US$1,580) worth of credit for the Flyme store. It comes just eight days after Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) major milestone when a fellow Chinese found himself to be the American company’s 25 billionth app store customer.

Meizu – whose current flagship is the MX – uses its own Android app store in China in addition to Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Play Store [1], in a manner similar to many other Android smartphone makers operating in the country, such as Samsung and Motorola. The Flyme store was launched in November 2009 – and then got its current name late last year – and has a choice of over 10,000 fun and useful apps and games.

Commemorating the app store milestone, Meizu’s product manager, Eddy Lin, told the media:

Before launching the M9 in 2011, the Flyme Store had around 10 million downloads. One year later, we broke through the 100 million barrier. Following the release of the MX, the rate of new downloads is accelerating even more.

A Meizu rep declined to tell TiA precisely how many devices the store is installed upon, but suggested that it was in the millions. The company rose to fame – or notoriety – shortly after the launch of Apple’s iPhone with what looked like an iPhone clone. But now it’s getting on with creating some pretty powerful Android devices, pushed on by strong competition by newcomer Xiaomi with its cheap dual-core M1 device. Meizu is said to be working on a new quad-core Android model that will launch in a couple of months’ time.