Apple announced on Friday a contest to celebrate and promote the countdown to 25 billion downloads from the App Store. As the company did to celebrate the 10 billion mark in January of 2011, the prize for downloading the 25 billionth app is a $US10,000 iTunes Gift Card.
Apple ended up celebrating the 10 billion download mark in January, and then announced in July that it had crossed the 15 billion download mark. While that five billion count took a little less than six months, it has taken just seven months to move the next ten billion apps, an impressive feat that could well be why part of why developers remain more committed to iOS even while Android has more market share.
As of this writing, the count stands at some 24,298,299,365 downloads. If past promotions are any indication, it will take a little less than a week to hit the promotional 25 billion mark.
You can read the official rules for the promotion for information about entering the contest without actually purchasing anything.