iTunes App Store: 1.5bn served Apple's iTunes App Store has reached another mind-numbing milestone: 1.5 billion apps downloaded in its first year of operation. Just last Friday, the App Store celebrated its first birthday. Today, Apple announced that its online repository of both smart and stupid apps was leaving its competitors in the dust. "With 1.5 …
.ah who cares. Meaningless stats that sound big but aren't. 38 apps per user, the typical teen will send 10,000 SMS per year.
Even at a buck apiece - that's shared between Apple, AT&T/O2/T-Mobile and the Developers - it's hardly earth shattering revelue. If only 10% are paid for, it's a pretty small sum for all involved.
1.5 Billion. That's the number of SMS sent in China in 2 days. Or globally every 4 hours....and all piad for. With annual revenues approaching $1/2 Trillion. Come back when you're grown up and significant.
iTunes is the only online music store I have brought music from. It achieved critical mass of just having enough music early on & being quick and easy alternative to torrents and other options (though ripping a CD is still maybe the best way of buying mainstream music).
The App store has gone the same way; it is so easy & painless to buy a game or app; and mostly cheap enough that you don't care. Frictionless commerce compared with any alternatives I have seen in the past.
60,000+ apps on the Apple store.. and although I have heard others Nokia/MS/Palm are also opening stores, I wouldn't even know where to start to find them, or if any of the apps are any good. I'm buying an iPhone, not because of the hardware, but the software and integration; I know I can get pretty much any app I want - even highly specific things like being able to check NZ motorway conditions...
I have never bought from Itunes (largely as i dont have any hardware locked into this effective monopoly) I have however bought from a number of other online suppliers and I would imagine that in the long haul Amazon will do very nicely!
As for hard to cactch up... Remeber when Altavista ruled the search world and then that irtrelevant upstart Google came along?
And those Japanese Car brands that would never upsurp those might US & UK car giants!
Long live GM long live Rover!
And, then there are the Horses.... what coudl possible over tak them as the no. 1 means of travel (after walking)
what others? it's not like you have a wealth of other vendors to choose from when getting applications for an iphone or ipod touch (legitimately anyway).
although i too would like to see the stats on how many were free downloads, in all the time i've had my iphone i've downloaded hundreds of apps, but only bought 1, for 59p. I then discovered a free alternative that was far superior.
You seem to think that the article is about texting for some strange reason. Read it again and take note that it's about application sales. Application sales have nothing to do with AT&T or O2.
Then read this from August 2008 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/16/apple_appstore_software_sales/
and then this from December 2008
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/26/ifart/
The amount of money being talked about is not chicken feed. There was another Reg story about three app developers who were earning 5 figure sums (but I can't find it.)
I just wish I was smart enough.
"Meaningless statistics given that other manufacturers don't force owners to obtain all their apps from a single place."
So where DO you get them from then? Nokia's app store? Good luck, let us know how that goes.
Apple might run a closed system, but if that was a problem to anyone other than a few jailbreaking l33t haxorz then we wouldn't be seeing these sales figures, would we?
Still amazes me that noone implemented that before, apart from some Linux distros (although most never understood the point of hiding libraries and dependencies by default). Thank Jobs for valuing innovation so much.
Even more amazed that Nokia did such a poor implementation, fortunately if you don't like the iphone, Android's got a very nice one
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