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Apple announces 50 billionth app download winner, awards $10,000 App Store gift card

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Apple today has officially announced the winner of its $10,000 iTunes gift card giveaway in a press release after reaching 50 billion app downloads yesterday.

And the app that marked the 50 billionth download goes to: Say the Same Thing by Space Inch, LLC. Lucky winner Brandon Ashmore from Mentor, Ohio will be receiving a $10,000 App Store gift card for his download.

Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue provided the following statement:

“Apple would like to thank our incredible customers and developers for topping 50 billion apps downloaded,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. “The App Store completely transformed how people use their mobile devices and created a thriving app ecosystem that has paid out over nine billion dollars to developers. We’re absolutely floored to cross this milestone in less than five years.”

Apple’s full press release below:
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Sprint buys $480M in spectrum/customers from US Cellular, FCC fines AT&T $700K for overbilling

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A couple carriers are making headlines today for different reasons. Sprint, which could soon be scooped up by Softbank, announced today (via Engadget) it is spending $480 million to acquire PCS spectrum and 585,000 customers from U.S. cellular across the Midwest. As always, the deal is subject to approval from government officials in the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission, but Sprint could take over the spectrum and customers in “parts of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri and Ohio including the Chicago and St. Louis markets” by sometime next year:

Under the terms of the agreement, Sprint will acquire 20 MHz of PCS spectrum in the 1900 MHz band in various Midwest markets including Chicago, South Bend, Ind. and Champaign, Ill. and 10 MHz of PCS spectrum in the St. Louis market.

AT&T is also making the news today with the FCC announcing the carrier will pay a $700,000 fine to put an end to the agency’s investigation into how the carrier handled its transition to mandatory monthly data plans (via BGR). The investigation followed complaints from consumers that AT&T had switched them from grandfathered pay-as-you-go plans to its new monthly plans as far back as 2009. According to the FCC, as part of the settlement, AT&T “has agreed to refund excess charges paid by individual customers, which could be as much as $25 to $30 a month, depending on data use”:
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Apptrace launches in beta, company claims 400K iOS apps get no downloads

App analytics firm Adeven is launching its new Apptrace tool today that provides statistics on iOS apps including the number of countries an app is available in, its global ranking, overall ratings, and daily rankings for specific markets. Also, the ability to compare apps to one another is coming in a future update to the free tool. Speaking with GigaOm, the company shared some pretty interesting stats about the App Store—approximately 400,000 apps have no downloads or rankings:

“The reality is there are only a couple of thousand apps that really make some kind of downloads,” Christian Henschel, Adeven CEO, told me. “This is based on Apple’s closed system — it’s tough to discover those kinds of apps. You don’t have proper search, so the only way to discover new apps is through the top listing.”

“If you’re not on those lists, it’s not sure that you’re being discovered by anyone else. The top 25 tend to be the same companies who spend millions of dollars to get to the top of those lists. If you’re an independent, small app publisher, then it’s really tough to be discovered.”

Apple brings 25 billionth app download winner to Beijing to give her this $10,000 iTunes gift card

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Earlier this month, we told you Apple awarded a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card to Chunli Fu of Qingdao, China for downloading the 25 billionth app from the App Store. As part of her prize, Apple flew Fu to Apple headquarters in Beijing for a visit to the corporate offices and then the Sanlitun retail store to collect her prize at a press event and award ceremony. Several local reports from qdqss.cn and elsewhere were summed up in a story over on MIC Gadget.

According to the report, Fu was an iPhone user for only a month before being contacted by Apple about the contest:


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