Apple has begun its countdown to the 25 billionth app downloaded from the App Store, and, as with previous milestones, is offering a prize for the person to grab it. This time around it’s a $10,000 App Store Gift Card, reports Macrumors.

Screen Shot 2012 02 17 at 9.07.40 AM 520x319 Apple celebrates App Store countdown to 25B downloads with $10,000 prize

The contest can be entered by simply purchasing an app from the App Store, or by entering manually via an entry form, no purchase or download required. The contest rules state that “the downloading of the 25 billionth app is considered to be either the downloading of the 25 billionth app from the App Store or the receipt of the non-purchase entry after the download of the 24,999,999,999th app, whichever comes first”,  (good luck with that one) that person will win the contest.

Apple has run similar promotions like this in the bast, celebrating 10 billion App Store downloads a year ago and 10 billion iTunes Music Store downloads in 2010. There have also been markers at the 1B song and 100M song milestones.

Apple says it will monitor entries to make sure nobody is using any automatic downloading mechanisms, only 25 entries per day, per person, are permitted. So, get to downloading, just not too quickly.