10 Years of Apple's App Store: How Has It Changed Markets and Mobile Device Use?

Apple recently announced that its App Store service had officially reached its 10th anniversary, highlighting how the platform has enabled numerous ways to interact with mobile phones and experience content, while creating many opportunities for market development.

Apple's App Store officially launched on July 11, 2008, alongside the iPhone 3G. Just 500 apps were available at launch, but by early December that year, the catalogue had grown to more than 10,000 apps. It subsequently continued to grow at an almost doubling pace. As of this year, more than 500 million people visit the App Store each week on average. Over the past 10 years, it has developed into a substantial economy, and Apple has already paid out as much as US$100 billion in revenue shares todevelopers worldwide, whose work has created rich and varied app experiences.

Compared with earlier sales models on PC platforms, apps, whose average selling prices rarely exceed US$10, clearly make it easier to attract users to purchase and use them. Combined with products such as the iPhone, iPhone touch and, later, the iPad, apps also enable unexpected uses that extend hardware beyond its original functions. The launch of the App Store has therefore substantially changed the experience of using products such as the iPhone, further transformed human–computer interaction, and encouraged many companies to emulate its operating model, creating an entirely new app market economy。

Apple's relatively standardised hardware specifications and high rates of software upgrades also give developers a comparatively straightforward environment in which todevelop app content, without having to worry additionally about compatibility with hardware or operating system versions. A single development process can even support deployment across different hardware devices.

Beyond changing how people use mobile phones and other devices and driving the mobile-first market trend, the growth of the App Store has also reshaped the gaming market. More game developers have moved from PC and home console platforms to mobile devices, whose usage patterns have changed the gaming experience. In-app payments have further changed how content is consumed, while subscriptions have helped develop markets for streaming video and audio, digital books, newspapers and magazines. At present, more than 28,000 apps, including services such as Netflix and iQIYI, use subscriptions to attract millions of users and generate substantial revenue and profits.

As the trend of combining mobile devices with apps continues to grow, working, creating and learning on mobile devices such as phones and tablets is becoming increasingly mainstream.

As the growth of the App Store expands the app economy, more developers are now taking part in app content design, hoping to build a larger market through the opportunities the App Store creates.

To accommodate the increasingly rapid growth in the number of apps available, Apple began introducing a new App Store interface last year. Its “Today” tab introduces users each day to the creative stories, design ideas and impact behind different apps. Games have also been given their own dedicated tab, indicating that gaming content has become an important area of development for Apple's App Store.

Apple also hopes to connect the App Store on iOS more seamlessly with the App Store on Mac. Along with reducing differences between the user experiences of the two stores, this would substantially lower the barriers developers face in designing apps across platforms, allowing more iOS apps to move to the Mac. This suggests that, in the future, iOS devices and Mac computers will offer a more closely connected experience, giving users more content choices and developers more opportunities for growth.

Original article URL: https://qooah.com/2018/07/07/ten-years-of-apple-app-store/