Apple calls to award woman $10K, she hangs up

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Apple calls to award woman $10K, she hangs up

Gail Davis, winner of $10,000 iTunes gift card
By Athima Chansanchai

Conditioned to politely hang up on telemarketers, Gail Davis followed form recently, only to find out she had hung up on a legit Apple giveaway of a $10,000 iTunes gift card for downloading Apple's App Store's 10 billionth app early Saturday morning, a milestone our own Suzanne Choney wrote about over the weekend.

"I thought it was a prank call," the UK-based Davis told CultofMac.com (Thanks Gizmodo for pointing us there.) She remembers saying, "Thank you very much, I’m not interested" and then she hung up. (She doesn't even own an iPod that can run apps, but her daughters own iPod touches.)

Luckily for this mom, her two teenage daughters came scrambling downstairs to tell her that this was no prank and that she better call back! They had apps to buy, for god's sake! (That last comment is from my own reenactment in my mind of this pivotal family moment.)

Turns out the girls had downloaded a few apps that morning, including the free Paper Glider app, in which the object of the app is to see "how far can you flick and fly your paper aeroplane." It's one of the top five free App Store apps, even with user reviews titled, "Truly crap," "Boring" and "Lame." It now has the distinction of being the App Store's 10 billionth app. And the lucky person who happened to download that milestone was going to get a reward: a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

"The girls came down and said it wasn’t a prank," Davis told CultofMac.com. "I had a moment of panic."

That panic led to a frantic return call to Apple, but that led nowhere fast, except to generate more family drama.

"The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was a genuine call," she recalled. "The girls were getting quite tense. They never would have forgiven me. They would have held it against me for all eternity."

But this reality show moment ends happily. An Apple exec called back and sorted things out, making sure Davis received the award.

Now may be the time for Davis and her husband to upgrade their iPods so their daughters aren't the only ones enjoying all those new apps and/or songs, movies, tv shows, etc. And from now on, she may want to screen calls first before hanging up so abruptl


Technolog - Apple calls to award woman $10K, she hangs up

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What's Driving Apple's 10 Billion App Success

The Google, Research In Motion, Palm/HP, and Microsoft app stores are all playing catch up with Apple, which just celebrated a major app download milestone, but without making one specific change, there's slim chance these competitors will narrow the gap.

Apple's iPhone App Store launched in July 2008. In just over two and a half years, iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad users have downloaded 10,000,000,000 applications for their iOS devices. The actual 10 billionth app downloaded is called Paper Glider and was purchased by Gail Davis of Orpington, Kent, U.K. Davis won a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

The statistics for Apple's App Store are staggering. Apple claims that there are 160 million users of iOS devices. That means the average customer has downloaded about 62 applications. At the current rate, iOS users are downloading 206 apps every second, 12,360 per minute, 741,600 per hour, and 17.8 million apps per day.

CEO Jerry Kennelly explains that today's problems aren't just caused by the quantity of network traffic, they're caused by inefficient applications "With more than ... seven billion apps [downloaded] in the last year alone -- the App Store has surpassed our wildest dreams," said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing in a prepared statement. "The App Store has revolutionized how software is created, distributed, discovered, and sold. While others try to copy the App Store, it continues to offer developers and customers the most innovative experience on the planet."

Apple says that the App Store has more than 350,000 applications buried inside it, with more than 60,000 dedicated to just the iPad. But what of the App Store's competitors? Google, Research In Motion, Palm/HP, and Microsoft each run their own app stores for their respective smartphone platforms. Do any of them have even the slightest hope of matching Apple's achievements?

No ... unless they make at least one specific change.

The central reason for Apple's success with applications is simple to pinpoint: iTunes. iTunes provides a single destination where iOS device users can search for, reach about, and download applications -- and then manage and sync those apps to their device. None of the other app stores has a similar tool for managing applications. iTunes and the App Store follow the basic Apple mantra of "making things easy." It's a snap to buy and manage applications using iTunes, as well as manage multiple iOS devices from a single piece of software.

Google (astoundingly) has skipped any sort of syncing solution for its Android platform. Important items such as contacts, emails, accounts -- and even applications -- can be backed up to the cloud, but it's not quite the same thing as having a desktop alternative. While the Android Market, Palm App Catalog, BlackBerry Apps World, and Microsoft Marketplace for Mobile all have online presences, none of them can claim to have the same level of utility that iTunes does. Simply having an online presence is not the same as providing a separate piece of software that acts as a storefront and device manager.

Speaking personally, I'd say that I have downloaded 80% of my iOS apps not from the device itself, but from iTunes. The iTunes App Store is superior for discovery. It's far easier to search for and read about applications via iTunes on a computer than from a device. This is the greatest failing of all the other stores and why none of them will be able to match Apple's success in the near term.

Google has the best chance of gaining ground on Apple when pitted against, Microsoft, Palm, and RIM. It has the app selection in place -- OK, not 350,000, but still well more than 100,000 -- and the resources to deliver a solid piece of desktop syncing software for managing applications. Why hasn't it? Why haven't the others? Are the carriers standing in the way? Are the handset makers? It could be that there are too many hands in the pie. Apple controls the App Store experience, and doesn't let its carrier partners interfere with how it is run.

This will not be an easy challenge for Apple's competitors to overcome. Their ecosystems have more complications and parties with vested interests trying to make sure they get a cut. Apple's strategy here has clearly worked, but it remains to be seen whether or not Google, Palm/HP, RIM, and Microsoft can figure out how to mimic Apple's success.


What's Driving Apple's 10 Billion App Success -- InformationWeek