IDEA No 89
THE APP STORE
In January 2011, the American Dialect Society presented its 2010 ‘Word of the Year’ award to an abbreviation. The ‘app’ had become part of everyday language.
Angry Birds is one of the most successful apps of all time. Every day, users spend 200 million minutes playing the game.
There would be no App Store without iTunes. By creating a benchmark music player and a dedicated platform for downloading music, Apple changed the music industry. Not only did iTunes spell the end of the CD, it also tackled online piracy. The CEO of Sony Music, Doug Morris, sums it up: ‘Steve [Jobs] created something that made it so easy for people to buy music. He had a complete thought that went from iTunes to the iPod. It made complete sense and it was something he felt people would be willing to pay for. In the end, he was right. It was all about having the right product.’
But Jobs knew the iPod would not be the right product for very long. Sooner or later, mobile phones and MP3 players would converge. The iPod was on borrowed time. In June 2007, Apple launched the iPhone. Its touchscreen interface was revolutionary, but it was not just Jonathan Ive’s elegant design that made it so desirable. Thanks to the app, the iconic phone was hardly a phone at all, it was a hand-held computer.
In 2008, replicating its winning formula, Apple launched the App Store, a dedicated platform that allows users to browse and download Appleapproved apps. It was an immediate success. When the iPhone was first released, there were 500 apps on offer. Within a year, thanks to third-party developers, there were 55,000.
Apps meant that the iPhone could be a browser, a route-planner, an entertainment system, a photo-editor, a torch, a piano or just about anything else – and often for free.
Competitors launched similar platforms, including Google Play, the Amazon Appstore and Blackberry App World. Despite Apple’s best efforts, the term ‘app store’ is now generic, referring to any platform that allows self-contained programs to be downloaded to mobile devices.
By January 2013, the App Store had topped 40 billion downloads. Within five years, it has totally transformed the mobile Web. Web users in transit can get the rich experience they have become used to, without the wait. Thanks to the app, the mobile Web is no longer a stripped-down version of the desktop equivalent. Quite the opposite: it is enhanced.■
A mosaic of apps made by taptaptap.com in December 2008 to celebrate 10,000 apps in the App Store.