Gimp downloads, This year to date.
Date Range: 2013-01-01 to 2013-04-28
Downloads: 6,641,391

What's interesting was the monthly consistency over the last year since 2.8 was released.

The Last Year
Date Range: 2012-04-28 to 2013-04-28
Downloads: 23,441,162

Farout!

I find it interesting that 80% of the downloads originated outside of the United States.

I know.More and more i am seeing tutorials from other countries.
Pretty phenomenal.

I think a significant reason for the increase in Gimp downloads outside the USA is that Adobe products outside of the USA are significantly higher in cost. It is cheaper for me (Australia) to hop on a return flight to Los Angeles and purchase a boxed set of Adobe CS6 than to buy it here. I believe the same is true for Europe where the cloud products are almost double the price of the same product in the USA.

What is also interesting is that it is very difficult to get a comparitive chart of prices as each Google query substitutes the Australian Adobe websites for the US Adobe website , so getting a price chart for the US is very difficult as I can only see Australian product prices.

A recent enquiry as to why Australians pay through the nose for software, elicited a a verbose reponse from Adobe that basically boiled down to "Because we can" .

As Gimp becomes more capable it is also becoming more attractive as a genuine alternative to Adobe Ps.
Going to Gimp 2.8 and having a similar One Sreen Layout to Adobe Ps is also a factor I believe.

Congratulations

Photoshop is phenomenal software but it is way overpriced, and bulky.
I know the Gimp devs want to keep the download size down but i think some of the better plugins created by users should be default installed.Then you wouldn't have to hunt them down being a new user.Like the python layerfx with preview, G'MIC, and liquid rescale to name just a few.Adding just these three filters brings a whole new level to Gimp.
I also think it would make Gimp even more attractive to new users of the software.
More and more people are seeing Gimp create very similar and high quality work as that of Adobe products and that brings in interest also.
In my personal opinion i think you are only going to see those numbers keep rising.

On a side note i really love the way Gimp Painter is set up.The interface is great and i think Gimp should adopt it and the Mypaint brush engine.

It's a good thing I have a second hard drive and setting up all the filters is a nightmare