Apple over the weekend reached its ten billionth iTunes app download, the company announced on Saturday. The record app was a free game called Paper Glider and was downloaded on the iTunes account of Gail Davis of Opington, Kent, England. When Apple called Davis to inform her that she had won a $10,000 iTunes gift card, the mother of two said “Thank you very much, I’m not interested” and hung up the phone.
After her daughters informed her of her mistake, Davis frantically tried to call Apple back, but was unable to get past Apple’s help desk operators.
“The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was a genuine call,” she says. “The girls were getting quite tense. They never would have forgiven me. They would have held it against me for all eternity,” Davis is quoted as saying in a Cult of Mac report.
Fortunately for her, an Apple executive rang back a few hours later to deliver the news. Davis credits one of her daughters for making the fortuitous download that earned the family $10,000 in additional app downloads. Davis, whose daughters have the only app-ready devices in the household with two iPod Touches, says she’s considering upgrading her iPod Nano to get into the app bonanza.
Apple began an official countdown to 10 billion downloads on January 14, projecting that it would achieve the record on January 23. The winning download came a day earlier than expected on Saturday January 22. The official official countdown page has now been changed to read “Thank You 10 Billion Times.”While Apple launched the App Store in July of 2008, the company says 7 billion downloads have occurred during the last 12 months.
