25 Billion Downloads: Apple’s App Store Hits Giant Milestone

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App_Store_25B

Apple’s App Store just hit 25 billion app downloads. The countdown just clicked over at about 9.45PM PST. Apple has promised a $10,000 gift card to the person who downloaded the 25,000,000,000 billionth app. The winner will be notified shortly and revealed on the countdown’s web page.

The countdown began on February 17th and proceeded at an estimated rate of 49 million app downloads a day. It took the wildly popular App Store just four years to reach the 25 billion download mark. By contrast, it took eight-and-half years for 16 billion songs downloaded to be downloaded from the iTunes Store.

Here’s a video of Apple’s 25 billion countdown timer clicking over:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4HgKHbyKQY&feature=youtu.be&a

Apple has run similar promotions on the past, celebrating the 10 billion apps downloaded as well as 10 billion music tracks downloaded.

In 2011, the winner of the app download countdown, Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, hung up on Apple, thinking it was a prank.

On Friday, Apple released some numbers about the “App Economy,” claiming it has created 210,000 jobs for iOS developers. Apple has paid more than $4 billion to developers since the App Store launched in 2007.

The Android market, which claims about 450,000 apps, hit 10 billion downloads in December 2011.

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