Apple counts down to 50 billion app downloads with $10,000 gift card giveaway

Apple's rewarding one lucky customer with a $10,000 App Store gift card to celebrate 50 billion downloads on the App Store. The customer who downloads the 50 billionth app will get the gift card.

In addition to this, Apple's also giving a $500 App Store gift card to each of the next 50 people to download an app. Alternatively, users can also enter the promotional contest by filling up a form with their details and participate in the contest without any purchase. A single user can fill up this form up to 25 times in a day.

Apple mentions that the contest is open to entrants who are 13 years of age or older at the time of entry, and are located in a participating App Store country.

In January, Apple had revealed that users had downloaded over 40 billion apps from its popular App Store since launch, with almost 20 billion of these downloads coming in 2012 alone. December 2012 was the most popular month till that period, accounting for 2 billion of those app downloads. Apple clarified that the number did not include re-downloads and app updates.

At last count, the App Store offers more than 850,000 apps across 23 categories to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users with over 500 million actives iTunes accounts in 155 countries around the world, with more than 350,000 native iPad apps available.

A recent report by market research firm Canalys said that Apple's App Store generated $1.48 billion in revenue, accounting for roughly 74 percent of the $2.2 billion earnings that app stores across all mobile platforms collectively made in the first quarter of this year. Revenue generated from Google's Play store accounted for a relatively modest 18 percent.