Apple announces countdown to 50 billion apps served, reveals top 50 apps of all time

Apple announced a countdown to 50 billion app downloads today, signaling that iOS downloads are north of 49 billion already.

“Apps have revolutionized the way we play video games, consume news, do business, educate, communicate, create art, and so much more,” Apple says.

And as Apple has done before for major app store download thresholds, it’s giving away a $10,000 App Store gift card to the lucky iOS user who downloads the 50 billionth app, plus a $500 gift card to the next 50 people to download an app.

Currently, the countdown is at 49,216,610,939, and increasing by about 1,000 every two seconds, so there’s perhaps two and a half days until the download counter crosses the 50 billion mark, assuming the rate stays the same.

In addition, Apple revealed the top 25 free and top 25 paid apps of all time. Facebook owns three of the top 16 free apps, and Google has four of the top 25. The original Angry Birds is the most downloaded paid app of all time, and an astounding three more editions of Angry Birds — Seasons, Space, and Star Wars — are in the top 18 downloaded apps of all time.

Image credit: Rovio