Apple is today celebrating 10 years since the launch of the App Store back in 2008 which debuted with a selection of 500 apps, compared to the selection of over 2.1 million apps available at our fingertips now ten years later.
According to Apple, More than 500 million people visit the App Store every week, with more than 1 million people taking time to read articles and features posted to the new Today page that went live with an App Store redesign last year.
In a statement shared to the Apple Newsroom, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller said the App Store had “surpassed all of our wildest expectations — from the innovative apps that developers have dreamed up, to the way customers have made apps part of their daily lives.”
In its first decade, the App Store has surpassed all of our wildest expectations — from the innovative apps that developers have dreamed up, to the way customers have made apps part of their daily lives — and this is just the beginning. We could not be more proud of what developers have created and what the next 10 years have in store.
Many of the first 500 apps available on the App Store are still downloadable today, although its fair to say they’ve been tweaked slightly since their original launch. Early App Store developers Keith Shepherd and Natalia Luckynova, who created Temple Run, said the App Store changed their lives.
“The App Store and iPhone changed our lives. Our first game, Imangi, launched the day the App Store opened. Fast forward 10 years, and we’ve created over 10 games, including Temple Run, which has been downloaded over a BILLION times. Our studio has grown from the two of us to a team of 35. None of this would have been possible without the App Store.”