Welcome to the club !! Google Maps for Android has now crossed one billion downloads. Last month, Gmail for Android became the first app to cross this milestone. The listing of the Google Maps app on Play Store currently shows that the app has more than 1 billion downloads and between 1 billion to 5 billion installations. This obviously doesn't count on the iOS installs.
It will be interesting to see long does it take for the other apps from the Google stable like the Search & Hangouts as well as Facebook, WhatsApp & Twitter to cross the milestone. They current statistics are as shown below:
In 2011, it was Google Maps which was leading the race vis-à-vis Gmail, with the former becoming the first ever Android app to reach 50 million downloads. Although Gmail crossed the cart and catapulted quickly to the 1 billion mark, but it has been quite a journey for Google Maps-one of the oldest and most valuable components of Android. From mapping between two points, it has evolved into a navigation companion showing 3D maps, scaled distances, walking directions, indoor maps and what not. It definitely deserves an applause.
Note: Though there is no official announcement from Google on this, but the Google Play Store listing statistics are a fairly credible number to go with.