Apple hits 10B app milestone

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CUPERTINO, Calif., Jan. 22 (UPI) -- A woman living in a London suburb won a $10,000 iTunes gift card Saturday when she was declared the 10 billionth person to download an Apple app.

Gail Davis, of Orpington, Kent, downloaded Paper Glider, a free game app from Neon Play, an English app developer, The Guardian reported.

Neon Play Chief Executive Officer Oli Christie said when the company got a telephone call from Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., he assumed the news was that one of Neon Play's apps was being featured in the iTunes app store.

"So when they said that Neon Play's Paper Glider was the 10 billionth app, I was completely and utterly dumbstruck," he said. "It's a great piece of news for the whole Neon Play team. Paper Glider is currently the number one app in the U.K., so this is a double piece of great news for our studio."

The app store opened in July 2008, and it has been so successful other smartphone platforms have copied it.

"With more than 10 billion apps downloaded in just two and a half years -- a staggering 7 billion apps in the last year alone -- the App Store has surpassed our wildest dreams," Philip Schiller, senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing at Apple, said.