Apple's App Store About To Pass 25 Billion Apps Downloaded

Apple's App Store is closing in on yet another major milestone soon to be reaching the 25 Billion Downloads mark. As with previous major milestones the company is celebrating the achievement by awarding the person who downloads Apple's 25-billionth app – or submits an alternate entry form immediately after the 24,999,999,999th app download (more on this later), a gift card to the App Store worth a total of $10,000.

Apple has unprecedented success with their App store surpassing major milestones at record rates. Assuming the 25 billionth download hits sometimes this month, that would mean that Apple will have added a total of 15 billion apps to its count between now and just over one year ago when the company similarly celebrated their 10 billionth app downloaded. This also means it has taken the company a mere three years to go from 1 billion downloads the the record tally of 25 billion.

The 25 billionth download contest

As usual Apple wants to add a little flair and fanfare to the milestone. So the company has setup another contest page with the all familiar download counter. Currently we are sitting on roughly 24,520,040,000, with thousand ticking off every few seconds.

The contest holds the same rules as the first several. Be the luck downloader to snag the 25 billionth app and you win. There is an alternate entry method but those that don't read the fine print might mistakenly think that means enter now.

In what has to be the oddest set of alternate entry rules I've ever seen or heard of, Apple is requiring the alternate entry winner be received immediately after the 24,999,999,999th app is downloaded. Considering the download counter displayed is for illustrative purposes only and not a real-time tracker we are all blindly entering so I guess it really does level the playing field. It just seems odd to expect such great timing.