Apple today is celebrating a milestone birthday for its hugely successful App Store.
“The richness of the iPhone, and later the iPad, as a platform was what really encouraged app developers to invest the resources to create these games and apps that were very sophisticated,” Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research, tells ABC news on the eve of Apple’s big anniversary.
As MMW reported last week, Apple is taking time to commemorate the app storefront’s groundbreaking accomplishments over the last five years.
To that end, Apple shared a promotional poster with reporters that highlights the remarkable growth that has occurred since 2008.
These highlights include:
- On July 10th, 2008, Apple opened the iPhone App Store with a scant 500 apps.
- The App Store is now populated by some 850,000 applications.
- There are now 350,000 native iPad apps available on the App Store.
- The App Store has generated more than 50 billion app downloads to date.
“Contrary to what many might believe, Apple didn’t invent the app store concept for mobile phones,” says Joanna Stern of ABC News. “One store called Handango had come preloaded on many Windows Mobile, Palm and Nokia, but very few paid attention to the preloaded mobile mall. It was the launch of Apple’s store that prompted millions to hop on the app bandwagon and start downloading advanced software. Sure, it had something to do with the appeal of that fancy new iPhone thing, but the “opening” of the Apple store was just as transformational as the all-touchscreen phone.”
