AppleInsider Staff
Marking the fifth anniversary of the iPhone App Store, Apple has sent a poster to members of the press marking the many milestones the digital download destination has seen over its first half-decade.
A picture of the poster was posted online on Wednesday by Tim Bradshaw, a reporter with the Financial Times. The actual anniversary will fall in one week, on July 10.
It was that same day in 2008 that the iPhone App Store debuted with more than 500 apps. The App Store opening coincided with the launch of the second-generation iPhone, dubbed iPhone 3G.
Today, there are more than 850,000 applications on the App Store, and the library has also expanded to a new product lineup, the iPad. There are 350,000 native iPad applications also available on the App Store.
Apple's digital storefront achieved its 50 billionth download in May. To put the growth in perspective, the App Store reached just 1 billion downloads in 2009, while the 10 billionth download came in 2011.
The poster sent out by Apple touts some of the most popular choices on the App Store, including ames like Angry Birds, Temple Run and Fruit Ninja; streaming services Netflix and HBO Go; and other options like Time Magazine and Paper.
Also touted by Apple is the amount of money paid to developers to date — more than $10 billion. One study released last week found that iPhone applications need to earn $47,000 per day to crack the top 10 grossing options on the App Store.
Andrew Orr
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Chip Loder
9 Comments
Quite staggering numbers. I do wish they would implement categories within categories, create a search system that lets me filter stuff and not show results only based on the name of the app. Also, within iTunes they could filer out iPad apps when I'm syncing my iPhone, only install new apps if they were designed for that device and so on and so forth. Still, happy anniversary Apple.
Remember when Steve wanted iPhone developers to only make web apps? That seems like it was ages ago.
Good thing he changed his mind about letting third-party developers create native apps. I doubt anyone at the time could've imagined the wild success the app store would turn out to be.
Next year, " Millions of Endless Possibilities".
Remember when Steve wanted iPhone developers to only make web apps? That seems like it was ages ago.
Good thing he changed his mind about letting third-party developers create native apps. I doubt anyone at the time could've imagined the wild success the app store would turn out to be.
Who could have imagined that the app store would actually DRIVE sales of the iPhone and iPad in its time as well.
It's not the iDevice specs that matter, its the ecosystem...!!
Remember the olden days when no one wanted to write programs for Apple products because all the money was in writing for PCs???
And now Microsoft has to bribe programmers to write something... anything... for the MS products. It's enough to cause monkeys to dance and chairs to fly.