Apple\'s App Store downloads hit 25bn

Apple announced Monday that downloads from its App store had hit 25 billion, with a man in eastern China grabbing a US$10,000 prize for taking the tally to the landmark level.

Chunli Fu of Qingdao, in eastern China, downloaded a free version of the Disney game Where's My Water?, winning a $10,000 iTunes gift card, the corporate said.

"We need to thank our customers and developers for helping us do so historic milestone of 25 billion apps downloaded," Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice chairman of Internet Software and Services, said in an announcement.

"Once we launched the App Store not up to four years ago, we never imagined that mobile apps would become the phenomenon they've got, or that developers would create such a huge number of apps" for the company's iOS operating system.

The historic milestone was reached in apps downloaded to greater than 315 million Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod devices worldwide, the Cupertino, California-based company said.

The App Store offers greater than 550,000 micro-applications to users in 123 countries all over the world, including games, business, news, sports, health and fitness, and travel uses.

The App Store has paid greater than $4 billion to developers, the corporate added.

The announcement came sooner than Apple's media event scheduled for Thursday morning (NZ time) that's expected to unveil a higher generation of the new-selling iPad tablet computer.

- AFP