The App Store is Apple’s curated marketplace for iOS applications. It opened on July 10, 2008, one day before the iPhone 3G went on sale, and it turned the iPhone from a sealed appliance into a programmable platform. Apple’s launch-day press release announced that “more than 500 native applications” were available and that “more than 125 applications” were being offered for free, with the rest priced by their developers.
The store’s core mechanic was wireless, on-device distribution. Apple described the App Store as “enabling customers to wirelessly download them directly onto their iPhones and start using them immediately,” with no need to connect to a computer or side-load software. Combined with the iPhone Developer Program, the store gave individual developers a direct, global retail channel that had previously been the preserve of large software publishers.
The commercial terms set the pattern for the industry. Developers kept 70 percent of the revenue from paid apps and in-app purchases, while Apple retained 30 percent in exchange for hosting, payment processing, and distribution. That 70/30 split, first established with the SDK earlier in 2008, became the de facto standard that competing app stores adopted, and decades later the 30 percent commission would sit at the center of antitrust and regulatory disputes.
Adoption was immediate and enormous. Within days Apple reported that “iPhone and iPod touch users downloaded more than 10 million applications from Apple’s revolutionary new App Store during its first weekend.” The volume validated the idea that a single trusted storefront, with one-tap purchasing and automatic updates, could create demand for software that desktop distribution never had.
The App Store created a new software-distribution paradigm. Rather than buying boxed software or downloading installers from scattered websites, users got applications from one curated, reviewed marketplace tied to their device and account. The model was so successful that Google’s Android Market (later Google Play), and eventually app stores on desktops and game consoles, were built in its image, making the curated app store one of the most consequential distribution innovations in software history.