Nearly two weeks ago, Apple announced that they were just about to hit the 50 billion milestone in terms of apps downloaded in the App Store. Today, the company finally hit the mark.
Apple hit 40 billion app downloads back in January, so that means that they tacked on 10 billion downloads in around four months. If that rate hold with a bit of acceleration (which it currently is), Apple will hit 100 billion app downloads by the end of next year or sooner. It’s a truly impressive figure.
But it’s not that far out ahead of Google’s Android. Today, at the Google I/O conference, Google announced that Google Play has seen 48 billion app installs, with 2.5 billion installs in the last month alone.
That part about the “grand prize winner” mentioned above? Well, that references the fact that Apple is giving out a big prize in celebration of hitting 50 billion. The person who was lucky enough to download the 50 billionth app will receive a $10,000 App Store gift card.
This isn’t the first time that Apple has offered such a prize. In March of 2012, when Apple hit 25 million downloaded apps, they gave away another $10,000 App Store gift card. The winner was a man from China who downloaded the puzzle game Where’s My Water.