Apple's next big digital sales milestone is coming up quick: 50 billion app downloads. To celebrate the occasion, Apple is hosting a giveaway where one lucky winner (the person who downloads the 50 billionth app) will walk away with a $10,000 App Store credit. What's more, the next 50 people after the grand prize winner will also earn a $500 gift card.
When Apple announced the giveaway, there were roughly 793 million downloads to go. For reference, it took about 15 days for people to download 700 million apps. Of course, the number of apps and the number of iOS devices have increased over the course of the past year which means we could see Apple announce winners within the next two weeks.
In announcing the giveaway, Apple also revealed their top 25 all-time free and paid apps for the iPhone and the iPad. Topping the paid charts for the iPhone was Rovio's Angry Birds while Apple's Pages app got the nod on the iPad. In the free app category, Facebook was the most downloaded app on the iPhone and Microsoft's Skype was the top freebie for the iPad.
This isn't the first time that Apple has handed out prizes in celebration of specific milestones. Earlier this year Cupertino gave away a 10,000 Euro iTunes gift card to the lucky recipient that downloaded the 25 billionth song on iTunes. Last March, Chunli Fu from Qingdao, China, received a $10,000 gift card and a trip to an Apple Store to pick it up for downloading the 25 billionth app from the App Store.