March 5, 2012: Apple reaches a staggering milestone, with 25 billion apps downloaded from the iOS App Retailer.
The corporate celebrates the event with a giveaway titled the “25 Billion App Countdown.” The fortunate 25 billionth app downloader wins an iTunes reward card price $10,000.
Apple’s 25 Billion App Countdown
The winner of the reward card is Chunli Fu from China. The app is Disney’s The place’s My Water?, a free puzzle recreation launched the earlier September.
“We’d wish to thank our clients and builders for serving to us obtain this historic milestone of 25 billion apps downloaded,” says Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice chairman of web software program and providers, in a press release. “After we launched the App Retailer lower than 4 years in the past, we by no means imagined that cellular apps would grow to be the phenomenon they’ve, or that builders would create such an unimaginable collection of apps for iOS customers.”
On the time, the App Retailer supplied greater than 550,000 apps for obtain. Apple had doled out greater than $4 billion to builders for his or her 70% share of income from paid downloads.
App Retailer continues to develop
By comparability, right now the App Retailer peddles almost 2 million apps, and clocks greater than 100 billion downloads a yr. And the App Retailer’s attain and affect continues to develop.
“Apps and video games have grow to be the important supply for the world’s most revolutionary and well timed leisure,” Apple mentioned in a 2022 press launch. “The efforts, innovation, and creativity of the builders who leverage Apple expertise to construct these unimaginable experiences, coupled with the facility of the App Retailer’s world platform to attach companies of all sizes with over 600 million individuals every week throughout 175 international locations, has led to builders promoting digital items and providers incomes greater than $260 billion for the reason that App Retailer launched in 2008.”
Apple cherished the milestones
Just some years in the past, Apple preferred celebrating milestone occasions with promotions just like the 25 Billion App Countdown. In truth, a 2004 contest to mark 100 million iTunes track downloads made the 2012 app obtain contest look meager.
The winner of the 2004 contest obtained a private cellphone name from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, a 17-inch PowerBook, a 40GB iPod and a present certificates for 10,000 iTunes songs.
As of late, Apple largely avoids making an enormous deal of those sorts of landmark occasions. When Apple handed the 1 billionth iPhone milestone, the corporate did little to commemorate the event. The identical held true when Apple’s market cap surpassed the $1 trillion valuation. And $2 trillion. And $3 trillion.
Equally, Apple avoids sharing too many particulars in regards to the utilization of providers like Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Arcade and Apple Health+. The corporate additionally stopped revealing the variety of iPhones offered every quarter.
Whereas we perceive the logic behind this less-bombastic technique, we miss the joy of such old-school Apple occasions. It was enjoyable when Apple eagerly (and publicly) counted right down to its subsequent gigantic gross sales file.
