Last week, Josh Wolford reported on the huge promotion Apple is running, giving away a $10,000 gift card for the person who gets the 25 billionth app download. It looks like that is going to happen tomorrow.
Apple has been running a counter on its website, tracking the number of app downloads. Let’s do some quick math. The counter spins too fast to read the ones, tens and hundreds place digits. So, let’s count how many thousands of app downloads happen in one minute.
iPhone stopwatch at the ready. And, go…
Total, approximately 35,000 downloads in that one minute, or about 2 million per hour. With about 72 million left to reach the goal, that gives us 36 hours before the number comes up, presuming it stays consistent 24 hours a day. That means tomorrow around 10:00PM EST.
That’s just enough time to get some downloads in, or the alternative entry forms. As Apple explained:
Sponsor is the sole judging organization whose decisions as to the operation of the Promotion and the selection of the potential winner are final and binding in all matters related to the Promotion. The prize will be awarded for the entry (either through an app download or through the non-purchase online entry) sent immediately following the download of the 24,999,999,999th app. Any download counter displayed by Sponsor is for illustrative purposes only. The potential winner will be determined by the order of the entries received. In the event that more than one entrant would be a winner based on the simultaneous timing of entries, one entrant will be randomly selected from those entrants as the winner. Each entrant’s chances of winning are dependent upon the number of eligible entries received.
There is a 25-per-day limit on submissions, wither as downloads, or as entries.
Let’s play a little game. What if someone came up with a way to submit their maximum number of entries at the last possible moment? When would they need to pull that trigger to get in at the wire? At 35,000 downloads per minute, that’s 583 per second. A person would have 1/23 of a second to submit their 25 entries at the wire.
Whoever wins that $10,000 gift card could use it to buy one of the following:
1 song a day on iTunes for 27.6 years