Apple has now served more than 40 billion downloads from the App Store, with nearly half of them in 2012 alone. The company isn't being shy about bragging about such numbers, either.

Apple may not be in the Las Vegas desert for CES 2013, but as usual, they're stealing some of that trade show's thunder with a Monday AM press release. This time it's to announce that the company has now served more than 40 billion downloads from the App Store -- and nearly half of those were done last year alone.

“It has been an incredible year for the iOS developer community,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “Developers have made over seven billion dollars on the App Store, and we continue to invest in providing them with the best ecosystem so they can create the most innovative apps in the world.”

Apple now holds more than 500 million active App Store accounts, and those users gave the company a record-breaking December with more than two billion downloads in only a single month.

The company's press release singles out popular titles such as Temple Run (downloaded more than 75 million times in 2012), Autodesk and Hollywood director JJ Abrams' Action Movie FX, which are among the more than 775,000 apps served up in 155 countries around the world.

Oh, and should you try to accuse Cupertino of inflating the numbers by counting re-downloads and updates, the company was quick to point out that it's 40 billion unique downloads -- which sort of makes you wonder how much bigger that number could be if you counted subsequent downloads and updates, doesn't it?

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