When will Apple sell its 10 billionth app? Next Friday morning (PST), according to my calculations.
Here’s how I worked it out. We took a screenshot of Apple’s app counter at about 8am on Jan 14th for our first report about the sweepstakes. It showed ~9,775,350,000.
At 8am this morning (Jan 16), it showed ~9,830,422,000. That’s a difference of about 55,072,000 apps in 48 hours, which means apps are being sold at a rate of ~1,147,333 apps an hour. (CNet says Apple is selling 1,000 apps every second, or 1,200,000 apps an hour).
The counter is approximately 170,000,000 apps short of 10 billion. At a rate of ~1,147,333 apps an hour, it would take 148 hours — or 6 days — to hit the 10 billion mark. Hence, early Friday morning.
Now, I’ve flunked math all through my life, and I am in no doubt I’m totally wrong (plus I’ve done a ton of rounding). So please help me out. When will the 10 billionth app be sold?
UPDATE: Reader Allan in the comments reckons it will be Saturday evening PST. Here’s his reasoning: “The counter is running at about four seconds per 1,000 apps (watching the counter), or 15,000 per minute. That’s 900,000 per hour, or 21,600,000 a day. When the counter hits 9.862 billion, there will be 138 million to go. At 21.6 million a day, it will take 551,232 seconds to go another 138 million, or 6.38 days, which is six days and a bit over nine hours. Set your alarms.”
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
