A year ago, Apple opened an iPhone app store. If you read the press a year ago, you can't help but smile: almost every analyst predicted the failure of the Apple initiative. Foreign publications wrote about some incredible framework in which developers are being driven and put the Windows Mobile platform as an example, programs for which can be downloaded from many catalog sites. The Russian media will forever be remembered for the fact that the disadvantage of the App Store was called the inability to buy a program on disk (there were also such warnings for readers!).
Now hardly anyone will challenge the success — there are more than 65,000 applications in the App Store. Moreover, the store has really become popular — more than 1.5 billion downloads confirm this. Now Nokia (Ovi), Microsoft (Windows MarketPlace for Mobile), Palm (App Catalog), Google (Android Marketplace) and many others have made or are preparing to make similar steps.
Another interesting point is that the App Store is not the first mobile app store. For example, Handago celebrated a decade earlier this year, they have almost all smartphone manufacturers and software for them as partners: Nokia, Microsoft, Research In Motion, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, But the result against the background of Appple is not so bright: supporting more than 1000 devices and 8 operating systems, Handago for 10 years have achieved about 100 million downloads.
You can argue for a long time what ensured the success of the App Store, but two things are indisputable. Firstly, Apple has made the simplest store, where ordinary people can download and buy software, and not geeks who are not used to climbing software archives. Secondly, the company managed to convince developers and investors of the prospects of the iPhone platform. In the computer literature devoted to Apple, you can find statements that in the late 80s - mid—90s Apple lost Windows precisely because of the lack of a large number of applications. Even so, in the case of the iPhone, Steve Jobs did not repeat the mistake.
This week, on the pages of MacRadar, you will be able to read several interviews with developers of popular iPhone apps. We hope you will be interested in their opinions about the App Store.
