The 25 billionth app has been downloaded from Apple Inc.’s app store, the company said today.
The app that marked the milestone was a free version of the gameWhere’s My Water? Chunli Fu of Qingdao, China will receive an iTunesgift card worth $10,000 for being the user who downloaded the app,according to a report in the Globe and Mail.
Besides hitting a watershed for Apple, the download also illustrates ahuge shift in the delivery and consumption of digital content. Bymakinga toolkit available for third party iPhone app developers back in 2008,Apple sparked a revolution in apps created outside its own walls andeasily available on mobile devices. Companies such as Google and Research and Motion have sincefollowed that model.
More than 550,000 apps have been created since then for the 315,000 iOSdevices that have been sold – iPod Touch, iPad and iPhone. Appdevelopment has become a big business, with Apple stating that appcreation for iOS devices has created 210,000jobs in the U.S. alone,not counting apps developed for Android, BlackBerry and otheroperatingsystems.