The Apple customer who downloaded the 10 billionth iPhone app – and in the process scooped a $10,000 gift card from the company – nearly missed out on the prize as she thought it was a hoax.
Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, explained: “I said ‘Thank you very much, I’m not interested’ and hung up. I thought it was a prank call.”
It was actually Davis’ daughter who bought the 10 billionth app from Apple’s store with her purchase of the virtual paper airplane app “Paper Glider”. But having hung up, Davis desperately tried to phone the company back, after being told her the “prank” may have been genuine.
Eventually, Apple’s vice president of Internet services Eddy Cue personally phoned to tell Davis that she had in fact won the prize.
The App Store opened for business on July 11, 2008, initially offering 500 free and paid downloads. There are now more than 400,000 separate iPhone and iPad apps.
According to analysts, the average revenue for each app developed is around $8,700, but big hits can generate millions almost overnight, and Apple takes a cut of 30 per cent on each sale.
The model has been so successful that Apple has now extended it to its desktop and laptop computers, with its new Mac App store. Rival smartphone operating system developers Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Microsoft and HP-owned Palm have all also created their own app stores.
