Apple anxiously awaits the selling of their billionth App download celebration
By Laura June 
posted April 10th 2009 12:22PM
posted April 10th 2009 12:22PM
Apple's going all out in anticipation of a landmark for the company -- the downloading of one billion apps in the App store. Not bad for nine months of work, if you think about it: over 110 million a month, in fact. About 27 million a week... well, you get the idea. Oh yeah, they're giving away a bunch of stuff too, so be sure to check that out if the mood strikes you.
From the 'Official Rules':
"The prize will be awarded for the entry (either through an app download or through the non-purchase online entry) sent immediately following the download of the 999,999,999th app."
Someone calculate how long it will take for the numbers to reach that... 14 days or something?
12.3 days
I posted earlier about "downloading a free app every hour to try to win" .. well, like most contests, they have a free entry form.
I figure, can't hurt to try. If you go to Apple's website there's a prominent-enough link saying "no purchase necessary to win" and you can fill out the form. max 25 entries per day. I'll fill it out at least once.
Only once per day, scrub.
It makes sense. According to Apple Insider, "...free applications downloaded from the App Store are in use by less than 5 percent of users after 30 days since downloading initially. Additionally, 20 percent of free apps are used more than on one occasion... The case is the same for those paid apps which are less likely to be used multiple times than the free ones."
At the current rate it will hit 1 billion on the 22nd at approximately 2pm.
the rate will surely increase once more people get to know about this. Good calculation, but have you taken growth into consideration?
Sorry, but the rate will definitely increase day by day. It'll be like those mega-million jackpot lotteries. It might even crash the servers the load will be so high. It might even reach a billion in a week. Apple is just going to leave other companies' apps stores in the dust.
I can't wait to see Microsoft give out a prize for it's one millionth mobile app download by sometime next year. No self-respecting WinMo user will download from the Microsoft Store because of the type of users they are. They'd rather go to 20 different sites to download free software and Microsoft will wonder why nobody's downloading from their app store. Compounded with the fact that WinMo users are cheapskates (zealously frugal), there's no way Microsoft can make an money from an app store.
if you register on the page you are limited to 25 entries per day, lol
1 billion?!!in 1.5 years.insane!
Right now I feel sorry for nokia,winmo,bb,android fanboys.
They have been seriously raped by apple
Innovation. iPhone has schooled like a mafia king .
This has established complete dominance
On topdawg smartphone and iPhone os superiority,.agree?
Why feel sorry for a bunch of losers? If that's their fate, so be it. They sat around for years in R&D playing with themselves and giving users the minimum upgrades possible. Add a button here, an extra key there, add about 1/16 of an inch to the screen area and declared all was fine. No need to think too hard. If they didn't upgrade the OS firmware for a year, tough titties on the user. They'll get around to it in their own sweet time. I think Palm waited about four years too long.
The companies of Palm, Google AndroidOS, MS WinMo, and Nokia swore on their mothers that the iPhone was nothing, never had anything original, was bound to fail in a matter of months and yet are scrambling like cockroaches trying to go up one better than the iPhone. They'll happily throw in a half-dozen better hardware features than the iPhone and when the handset flops, they'll wonder what went wrong. It's like they're trying to put together a puzzle where the pieces don't quite fit. They keep building a handset for today when Apple is building a handset for tomorrow. How can they be leaders if they keep following the leader's droppings?
Feel sorry for them? I say eff 'em.
Most people buy or download some iPhone app and never use it.
The iPhone is merely a device to suck money from your credit card monthly.
If you get a cheap phone service, and a Peek, you would save enough money to spend on other gadgets.
You do not get to heaven by owning one pseudo cool gadget.
You get to heaven by owning many cool gadgets (and a few crap gadgets).
I have seen how the Woz dances. Buying iPhone apps only makes him want to dance more.
So most dominating os smartphone of all time,,?
All palm has to do is sell 1 billion apps in 1 year that's all,.
LOL!!!!!
Finally a phone made for the people by the people ,
Fanboyism aside.
So what is better open or closed source?
LOL!
LOL!
..
Wait. What?
wow the i-fart must be a really popular
lol... they're are cheating moving the tens place before the one's place
Or the people are downloading dozens of apps per second..
Shank, you're a failure just as much as MS is.
Wait till the Ovi app store launches... It will attain a billion downloads in 9 - 11 months from launch date... As for Rim and the rest, they are hopeless... Marketplace has some sought of potential though... And as for apple their reign would soon be over when the N97 and palm pre are released, cuz when these babies are out, especially the Nokia N97, everyone will dish their current iphones and won't even consider getting the featureless iphone 3.0.
The Palm Pre's screen is way too small.
"featureless iphone 3.0"
Haha.
Oh wait. You're serious?
this puts the approximate date at 28/4/2009
UPDATE
the date could come as early as 18/4/2009 (after 10.3607815 days)
this depends on the variable rate of change on the counter, the speed of the counter and how it changes, this rate makes the approximation very hard, I only took a sample of 10 minutes, 47,000 (approx) was downloaded, so maybe I should survey during a longer duration (24 hours) to get a more accurate result
At the current rate it will reach 1 billion at approx. 2pm on the 22nd. It's a pretty simple calculation really.
$13,746 in Prizes
17" MBP
32GB iPod Touch
$10,000 in iTunes Cred
Time Capsule (Glad they added this. With all the free stuff, whoever wins will most likely download all the HD movies in the library.)
Oh, and you can enter up to 25 times. Not sure if anyone read the rules and posted. Just trying to help.
I say we stop buying these apps and make Apple wait - you know, the way they make their users wait (for hairline crack fixes, hinge pops, screen flutter fixes, java updates, etc...).
I wonder what the most expensive app is so far??
Im Rich app?
man, that's impressive no matter what kind of phone you use.
To sell a billion of ANYTHING in nine months is a mixture of market saturation, advertising, and features and general amazingness. Granted, the iPhone is lacking some key features, but more than makes up for it in options thru the app store.
Apple does a great thing in advertising the iPhone. Apple puts commercials on TV saying "need to do something? The iPhone can do it... with a little app from the App Store." The simple, one-click user interface of iTunes is worlds beyond anything from WinMo, Palm, or Android. Until anyone can make a simple, one-click piece of software (NOT A WEB INTERFACE>>>) that just works and can sell you something easy, they can't even dream of selling a billion apps in 9 months.
Congrats, Apple, on raising the bar. Now, just give me some freakin' video...
WinMo app downloads till date: uncountable
More of Apple's marketing campaigns. Good for them! Now, shut up about it!
Symbian and WinMo have been around for years and I'm sure both of those platforms served up their billionth app ages ago. Good for them, too! Now, shut up about it already! ;)
Yesterday I tried and successfully entered once. Subsequent entries resulted in being told that I had entered too many time despite only entering once and the page stating that I could enter 25 times a day. Late yesterday the CAPTCHA was displaying an image and by evening the page was displaying an XML error.
I tried again this morning and was able to successfully enter once. Still cannot enter more than once despite the page still saying that you can enter 25 times a day.
Class action lawsuit?!? Sounds fishy, like McDonalds Monopoly.
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but with apple.com loaded on two separate tabs, the counts aren't in sync.