MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — It’s estimated that Apple’s App Store sees more than 46 million mobile downloads every day. And all of them began with an idea.

“It can be a long process, but the way people are doing development today is infinitely faster than what people used to do,” said Rick Huebsch, the associate director for technology and commercialization at the University of Minnesota.

He says anyone with an app idea can create an app. But it does require some programming knowledge.

“You can write a program, post it in a store, get it downloaded the same day and reach millions of people without actually having to contact them,” Huebsch said.

Google has App Inventor Software on its website and that provides a step-by-step tutorial on how to design and create an app.

Apple also has an abundance of app-designing tool kits. Once created and approved, Apple makes the new app available for download in their app store.

“Their incentive is to make that tool kit available to anybody,” Huebsch said. “The more apps that get written, the more money they make.”

Huebsch said his company recently helped create an app that shows patients what their surgery will look like.

Right now, there are approximately 750,000 apps available in the Apple Store.