Apple to give $10,000 prize for downloading 50-billionth app

If you’ve been mulling downloading something from Apple’s App Store, today would be a great day to do it: Apple will be awarding a prize to the person who gets Apple to the 50-billion download milestone.

Apple currently has a counter running on its website, and just after 11:00 a.m. ET, nearly 49,300,000,000 apps had been downloaded, with that number growing all the time. If you’re the person who downloads app number 50 billion, you’re be rewarded with a $10,000 App Store Card, so you’ll never have to debate whether to buy that in-app downloadable content ever again.

[ Related: Man gets $10,000 gift card for downloading 25-billionth App Store app ]

Unlike previous times Apple has awarded a gift card for downloading a milestone app, the first 50 people to download the first 50 apps after that will get a $500 App Store gift card.

It seems that Apple has started reaching these milestones faster and faster as more people adopt the iPhone and iPad devices. Apple announced that 10 billion apps had been downloaded from the App Store on January 14, 2011, Geek.com reports, followed by 25 billion on March 2, 2012.

[ More Right Click: BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins predicts tablets will be dead in five years ]

Since its launch in 2008, the App Store has continued to do well, with downloads increasing 11 per cent at the beginning of this year, PC Mag reports. While competition in the form of Google Play, the Windows Phone Store and BlackBerry World have sprung up in the last five years for their respective devices, the widespread support of the App Store has continued to make Apple a strong choice for people who want a wide variety of apps, and who develop them.

Need to know what’s hot in tech? Follow @yrightclick on Twitter!