Apple’s App Store downloaded its 10 billionth app this weekend, and the prize of a $10,000 gift card to the lucky recipient was nearly turned down. The winner, Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, in the United Kingdom, hung up on the Apple representative calling with the announcement.
Davis got the call Saturday morning. She told news media that she “thought it was a prank call” and she simply said, “Thank you very much, I’m not interested.” Davis doesn’t own an Apple device to run apps, but her two daughters do — and they ran downstairs to plead with her to call Apple back.
‘A Moment of Panic’
The daughters had been busy downloading several apps that morning, including the free Paper Glider, which turned out to be the ten billionth. When they told her the call wasn’t a prank, Davis said she “had a moment of panic.”
She called Apple back, without much success, but later in the day an Apple executive called to confirm the award.
Apple Senior Vice President Philip Schiller noted that the 10 billion downloads occurred in about two and a half years, with seven billion of that in the last year alone. The App Store, he said, “has surpassed our wildest dreams,” adding that it has “revolutionized how software is created, distributed, discovered and sold.”
The store currently offers more than 350,000 apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad in 90 countries and 20 categories. About 60,000 of that total are specifically designed for Apple’s newest product line, the iPad. Recently, Apple also added an app store for its Mac computer line.
Avi Greengart, an analyst with Current Analysis, noted that it took Apple a year after the launch of the iPhone to come out with the App Store. When the iPhone was initially released, he said, Apple’s position was…