$10,000 iTunes Gift Card Goes to a Lucky Apple Customer

A lucky Apple user in Qingdao, China just received a $10,000 prize for downloading the 25 billionth Apple app from the App Store. In eastern China Chunli Fu unsuspectingly downloaded a free version of the Disney puzzle game, “Where’s My Water?” On Monday, March 5 Apple announced that Fu had won the $10,000 iTunes gift card.

"We'd like to thank our customers and developers for helping us achieve this historic milestone of 25 billion apps downloaded," said Eddy Cue, the senior vice president of Internet Software and Services at Apple, in a statement. "When we launched the App Store less than four years ago, we never imagined that mobile apps would become the phenomenon they have, or that developers would create such an incredible selection of apps for iOS users."

Over the weekend Apple announced that the 25 billionth app download milestone had been reached; however, it did not reveal who the winner was.

Instead, the App Store had an announcement posted on its website, “A billion thanks. 25 times over."

In January 2011 Apple gave a $10,000 iTunes gift card to Gail Davis, the 10 billionth customer at the Apple App Store, who was living in Orpington, Kent, U.K. Davis won the gift card downloading Paper Glider, a paper airplane flying game.

"Whilst app downloads of Paper Glider might not have experienced a huge shift after Apple's announcement, [Neon Play Managing Director Oli Christie] could not have imagined the response from the media and from potential clients," wrote The Next Web's Matt Brian. "Within two days of the announcement, Neon Play received numerous inquiries from digital marketing agencies and has already undertaken at least three projects as a result."

Apple launched the App Store in 2007. According to Apple, the app store now offers more than 550,000 apps for iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches. It also features more than 170,000 iPad apps as well.

Sources: Apple - Apple’s App Store Downloads Top 25 Billion and PCMag - Apple's 25 Billionth App Downloaded in China

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Apps from Nintendo? Not Any Time Soon!

The biggest app category in Apple’s App Store is games. However, according to The Loop, Nintendo does not plan to capitalize on that any time soon. Although Nintendo has been pressured by investors to begin designing games for iOS devices like the iPhone, the iPad and the iPod, according to comments made by Nintendo President Satoru Iwata, there are not any plans for games for iOS devices in the company’s near future.

“This is absolutely not under consideration,” Iwata told the Japanese news site Nikkei after a 3DS press conference. “If we did this, Nintendo would cease to be Nintendo. Having a hardware development team in-house is a major strength. It’s the duty of management to make use of those strengths. It’s probably the correct decision in the sense that the moment we started to release games on smartphones we’d make profits. However, I believe my responsibility is not to short term profits, but to Nintendo’s mid and long term competitive strength.”

However, tablets are on the rise. Will Nintendo need to change their stance in order to remain competitive?

“Collectively, iPad gamers are showing slightly decreased involvement with gaming on home consoles, mobile phones, and Nintendo handheld consoles,” Interpret analyst Jason Preston said in a statement. “These facts imply that iPad game developers and publishers can definitely reach a new audience on the iPad.”

Nintendo has already been going through some rough waters with the 3DS. In August the company had to drastically drop the price of their 3D hand-held device from $249.99 to $169.99. Nintendo felt that this was necessary to boost the sales numbers for the console a mere six months after its release.

On top of all of these issues that Nintendo is having, games sales are also down. In the July earnings report, Nintendo reported its first quarterly loss in its entire history. Despite this, Iwata does not seem to be concerned. He believes that Nintendo has a successful business model that will show its worth when the holiday seasons rolls around a little later this year.

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