Apple CFO Says 1 Billion App Downloads Soon

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.