Shane McGlaun
The person who made the billionth download will get about $13,000 in prizes
Despite how some consumers feel about Apple products, few will argue that Apple has some of the most desirable products and best product marketing on the planet. Apple has dominated the mobile music player market and is now conquering the smartphone market with its iPhone.
To go along with the iPhone, Apple launched its App Store last year that provided third-party applications for the handset ranging from video games to productivity apps. The App Store was a raging success from the start with over $30 million in sales during its first full month of operation.
This week Apple announced that the billionth download had been made from the App Store. A contest was running as the countdown to one billion downloads ran and the contest is now over. The one-billionth download was made yesterday by an unnamed user. Apple says that it will announce who made the billionth download soon.
The person who made the record setting download stands to get a serious gift package including $10,000 in iTunes credit, a 17-inch MacBook Pro, a 32GB iPod touch and a Time Capsule backup system. Apple says that in all it will give away $13,000 in prizes for the contest. All App downloader's were automatically entered into the contest.
Apple's App Store is so popular and has generated so much revenue that most all smartphone makers are now readying their own versions of the App Store, each trying to be slightly different from the Apple offering.
Information Week reports that the Google App store will be more open, the RIM store for the Blackberry will be more enterprise focused, the Ovi store from Nokia will be geared towards social networking and location-based services, and the Windows Marketplace from Microsoft will allow users to be billed by their carriers and offer a refund period.
