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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?

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