Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer suggests that the company's App Store is about to reach its billionth App download. The Apple iPhone is currently used by roughly 17 million people in 80 countries, and applications created by companies such as Bloomberg, SAP and Salesforce.com have increased the mobile device's usefulness to the enterprise.If the ticker on Apple's Website proves accurate, the billionth App from Apple's
App Store will be downloaded in the early hours of April 23.
At 5:00 p.m. on April 22, a
MarketWatch update had Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer saying the 1 billion mark
was "hours" away. Apple
also announced its quarterly results, including iPhone shipments of 3.7
million.
A randomly selected individual who downloads an App before the 1 billion
milestone will receive prizes from Apple including a MacBook Pro and an iPod
Touch, the company said.
The App Store now offers some 25,000 applications. Eight months after the
store's July 2008 launch, over 800 million Apps had been downloaded. As the App
Store closed in on the 1 billion mark, the counter on Apple's Website was
rattling off 1,000 App sales roughly every 12 seconds.
Roughly 17 million users in 80 countries use the iPhone device. Apple said the
most-downloaded free
Apps included Facebook for iPhone, Google Earth and Internet radio provider
Pandora.
Apple has taken steps to make the upcoming iPhone
OS 3.0 more enterprise-friendly, with companies such as SAP
announcing new initiatives to place mobile versions of their key products on
the device. Financial
applications by Bloomberg, PayPal, Salesforce.com and Citrix Systems have
likewise added to the iPhone's business functionality.
The iPhone OS 3.0 will arrive in June, with 100 new features. At the March
2009 announcement of the new operating system, some 50,000 individuals who paid
to be a part of Apple's developer program were given access to an updated SDK
(software development kit) with over 1,000 new APIs.
The iPhone hasn't just boosted Apple's fortunes. The combination of iPhone
activations and Internet data plans helped AT&T post an increase in wireless
profits for the past quarter, as the telecommunications company reported a
13 percent rise in wireless profits and an almost 9 percent gain in wireless
revenues.
The wireless division was AT&T's one bright spot in a first quarter that
saw its overall profit drop by 9.7 percent, thanks largely to declining amounts
of land-line subscribers. However, some 1.2 million new iPhone subscribers
mitigated the damage somewhat.