Apple announced today the numbers from last weekis MACWORLD Expo keynote Webcast. The stream, which was available in both QuickTime 5 format and MPEG-4 (via QT 6), was broadcasted to approximately 50,000 people, something touched on by Steve Jobs in the keynote itself. The QuickTime 6/MPEG-4 portion of the streams -- totalling 25,000 -- were handled by four Apple Xserve servers and the latest array of QuickTime broadcasting software. In addition, the MPEG-4 stream was the first ever large-scale MPEG-4 event. From the press release:

“It’s exciting that MPEG-4 is immediately taking off as the new industry standard for delivering high-quality video and audio,” said Larry Horn, MPEG-LA’s vice president of Licensing. “MPEG LA is proud to play a supporting role in providing worldwide access to this innovative new technology. With wide support from industry leaders such as Apple, we look forward to MPEG-4’s availability for creating and streaming content to PCs, cell phones, PDAs and set-top boxes.”

Larry Hornis sentiments on MPEG-4 taking off are further backed by statistics that show that more than 1.5 million Mac and Windows users have downloaded QuickTime 6 during the first seven days of itis release. More information on the keynote broadcast statistics can be found in the press release. Information on MPEG-4 and QuickTime can be found at Appleis QuickTime Web site.