From 15 to 55,000: A 24 hour experiment on the App Store

> Is there some gift-giving holiday in France coming up?

Not that I know of. There are many holidays in May, but none specifically related to gifting.

> Is there some gift-giving holiday in France coming up? Was this traceable to some specific site/list/opinion-leader endorsing the app?

I don't know, but I can tell you the current version (1.2.1) has basically all the reviews on the french appstore (30 notes out of 31, 27 reviews out of 29) and they are very positive overall (16 ★★★★★, 9 ★★★★, 4 ★★★, 1 ★)

> Does the app have a french interface option?

Nope, that's the number one complaint about it.

Maybe it's because there's more than 1 million iPhones in France? (1 out of 6 persons, currently more than 60 percent of peoples around me own an iPhone). I'm not aware of any gift-giving holiday (and I'm french). The only reason I can come up with is that the internet/connected french community is very strong, hence knowledge such as "this app is awesome and free" can spread very fast.

I just looked at the user's review on the appstore, and the rating is very high. There's even 5 stars with comments like: When will the french version be available? (It was written in french. I did the translation)

There's no french interface and It doesn't seem to really bother users, it could be a plus though.

At first I thought the reason for France showing up so prominently was that Glasshouse Apps Pty Ltd was based there. But I cannot find any contact information on their website with an address and Pty Ltd appears to be used for proprietary companies in Australia and South Africa.

EDIT: They are Australian according to this article: http://www.macworld.com.au/app-guide/gift-plan-20366/ So I have no idea why it hit so big in France.