billion

It seems like only yesterday that the iTunes App Store hit its 25 billionth download...actually it was only last year. It's incredible that the online marketplace (currently at over 49.2 billion downloads) will soon be doubling that number. To mark the momentous occasion, Apple is holding a contest that app addicts will surely appreciate. Feeling lucky? Then download on.

If you happen to download the 50 billionth app, you will win a $10,000 App Store gift card. Though the odds seem stacked against you, don't despair, as the first 50 users after the 50 billionth … Read more

On the heels of YouTube celebrating 1 billion unique monthly visitors to the site, the company announced Wednesday that these people are watching more than 6 billion hours of videos every month.

For a little perspective, that's equal to nearly 684,000 years of viewing -- or -- an hour a month for every human on Earth.

The 6 billion hours is up 50 percent more than last year and is also up substantially from just January, when the YouTube announced users were watching 4 billion hours of videos per month.

Google wants to "Keep" your notes.

Yesterday Google introduced Keep, the new mobile and Web-based note-storing service that looks to take aim at products like Evernote. Boasting a simple, easy-to-use interface, Keep will work with Google Drive so that all notes are synced across different platforms. Users can edit their notes from either their phone or the Web and the information will be saved everywhere. You can also use voice dictation and photos to help enhance each note you take.

The BlackBerry Store has topped 100,000 apps, 30,000 of which were just added in the last … Read more

What does 1 billion monthly YouTube users signify? It means that nearly one out of every two people on the Internet worldwide goes to YouTube.

That's a serious amount of people.

Google's video hosting service announced today that for the first time, it's driving these colossal numbers -- more than a billion unique users on the site, every month.

"If YouTube were a country, we'd be the third largest in the world after China and India," YouTube wrote in a blog post today. "Our monthly viewership is the equivalent of roughly 10 Super … Read more

The rise in worldwide subscribers on 4G LTE has far exceeded expectations. In just three years since its nascent beginnings, the mobile technology has skyrocketed -- going from 600,000 users in 2010 to nearly 100 million subscribers in 2012.

Now, in a new report, market research firm IHS iSuppli is projecting that global users will double in 2013 and that by 2016 LTE will claim more than 1 billion subscribers.

"With LTE emerging as a true global technology standard, its ecosystem now faces both challenges and opportunities," iSuppli's senior analyst for wireless communications, Wayne Lam, said … Read more

Big round numbers always make for a handy talking point, and so it is with 1 billion.

For several years, Asymco analyst Horace Dediu has been looking at what he calls the "race to a billion" -- as in, 1 billion users -- by a variety of tech products and services, from the PC to the Wii and the iPod, from AOL to Facebook, from BlackBerry to iOS to Android, and so on. And right, it's not always an apples to apples to apples comparison.

In his latest musings on the matter, looking back at a mass … Read more

Amazon is extending its roots in Seattle.

Regulatory filings made public today show that the e-commerce giant and gadget maker entered into an $1.16 billion agreement with Paul Allen's Vulcan Real Estate to purchase the 11 office buildings in Seattle's Lake Union neighborhood that it previously held under lease.

Vulcan Real Estate put the set of buildings on the market at the end of August. Last month the group announced plans to build and lease two more buildings for Amazon, as part of a $160 million project to give the company an extra 380,000 square feet … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- $2.5 billion is a lot of money, and it's the low end of what Apple says Samsung should pay for selling products that look and feel like the iPhone and iPad.

But just how did Apple reach that tally?

To explain, Apple today called on Terry Musika, a certified public accountant who has been involved with more than 200 intellectual property cases, including this one between the two tech giants.

In short, it's complicated.

"The calculation had to be done on a phone by phone, tablet by tablet basis," Musika said. &… Read more

China is in the big leagues when it comes to cell phone use. According to The Next Web, the Chinese government has officially announced that it now has more than 1 billion mobile phone users.

For comparison, the U.S. looks measly with just more than 330 million users, according to numbers from the CTIA wireless association.

The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released a report with the new numbers of in-country users, according to The Next Web. The report shows that after 2012's first quarter bump of 43 million new devices, the total number surpassed one … Read more