Users have downloaded 100 million applications from Apple's Mac App Store less than one year since its inception, the company announced.

Launched in January 2011, the Mac App Store was modeled after the iOS App Store, providing a single marketplace for all desktop applications for the Mac.

Nearly all of the most popular applications for the Mac are now distributed through the Mac App Store, including the latest version of the Mac operating system itself, OS X Lion.

“With more than 100 million downloads in less than a year, the Mac App Store is the largest and fastest growing PC software store in the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing.

In its announcement, Apple also said that the Mac App Store's sister, the App Store, holds more than 500,000 apps, with users downloading 1 billion apps per month, and the total number of downloads more than 18 billion.