Despite the fact that I’ve had an iPhone 4 for about a year now—and an iPod Touch for longer than that—the App Store is still amazing to me. Seriously, I open it up on my iPhone or my Touch and I’m literally sucked into app world for the next 30 to 40 minutes. Every time I go into the App Store, I find a new app that I absolutely need. And then another one. And another one. And another one. And…You get the point, right? I think sometimes we take for granted the fact that, just a few years ago, “apps” on a cell phone were, like, a calculator and a calendar. Now? There’s an app for everything. I’m still amazed.

So are you. Which is why Apple is still getting so many people to download apps. Recently, they even held their “App Store Countdown to 25 Billion Apps” promotion in order to celebrate the fact that they were approaching 25 billion apps downloaded. And, over the weekend, they passed the mark when someone by the name of Chunli Fu of Qingdao, China downloaded an app called “Where’s My Water? Free” and, in the process, won a $10,000 gift card from Apple. Yup, that’s right. 10 grand just for downloading an app! He’ll be able to download a lot more apps with that.

It’s quite the milestone for Apple. Although there are now 550,000 apps available in 123 different countries, 25 billion is a lot of apps. But it also shows how much apps have become a part of all of our daily lives. And with the Apple iPad 3 on the way today—that is what Apple is announcing today, right?!—we expect that number to grow exponentially over the course of the next year. As I said earlier, I’m still amazed at how far they’ve come. And I don’t see them going anywhere anytime soon.

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