Apple counting up to 50 billion App Store downloads

Apple counting up to 50 billion App Store downloads
Apple once again is counting up to its next digital sales benchmark.This time it's to 50 billion downloads on the App Store, its digital software store that launched in 2008, and currently has about 793 million downloads to go. Similar to previous contests, the person who downloads the 50 billionth app gets $10,000 in App Store credit. The company is also doling out $500 gift cards to the 50 people who buy an app immediately afterwards.Apple's last big contest for the App Store was for the 25 billion benchmark last March. Chunli Fu, a customer from Qingdao, China was winner, and nabbed a $10,000 gift card and a trip to one of Apple's stores to pick it up. More recently, Apple paid out a 10,000 Euro iTunes gift card for the 25th billion song sold on iTunes back in February.Along with the giveaway, Apple's listed its top 25 all-time paid and free applications on both the iPhone and iPad. Rovio's Angry Birds and Facebook top that list on the iPhone, while Apple's Pages and Microsoft's Skype hold that spot on the iPad. For last year's contest, it took people 15 days to download approximately 700 million apps, and both the number of iOS devices and the library Apps have increased since then. As of January, Apple said it has sold more than 500 million iOS devices, up from 365 million at the end of last March. It's also currently up to 850,000 iOS apps as opposed to the figure of around 600,000 apps from last April.