Apple's App Store is inching toward an impressive milestone: 25 billion downloaded apps.
Apple has set up a countdown clock monitoring its progress toward the eleven-digit figure, and currently counts 24,338,612,000 downloaded apps since the launch of the App Store in 2008.
In celebration of the milestone, Apple will award one person a $10,000 gift card to the App Store. By our count, that will buy you around 10,100 99-cent apps (or 10,100 copies of Angry Birds for all your friends), 5,025 $1.99 apps, and around 10 copies of BarMax, an app that costs $999.99. Apple users can win by purchasing or downloading an app, or by filling out an entry form (Read the find print on Apple's website here).
To put the 25 billion apps in perspective, consider that Apple celebrated the 10 billionth app download almost exactly a year ago (It also awarded a $10,000 gift certificate, though the woman who won it initially hung up on Apple by mistake, thinking it was a telemarketer rather than a bearer of good news).
As Inside Mobile Apps notes, in July of last year, Apple announced its App Store had surpassed 15 billion app downloads, which, according to Inside Mobile Apps, "[implies] that the iOS platform has on average seen about 1.5 billion downloads per month between then and now."
Apple said during its most recent earnings call that its App Store and iTunes Store together saw 140 million downloads on Christmas Day alone. Apple also announced that it had paid around $4 billion to app developers.
Looking for some app inspiration? Check out our guide to 10 essential iPad apps.