Happy app-iversary! Today is the tenth anniversary of the Apple App Store. In March 2008, Apple invited third-party developers to create new native applications for its iPhone and iPod touch devices, and four months later the store went live.
Steve Jobs had initially been reluctant to open up the famous Apple walled garden to outside devs, but he eventually came around to the idea—and defined our current smartphone experience by doing so.
Originally, just 500 apps were offered in the App Store. The number has ballooned since then to over 2 million available apps, and total downloads have topped 200 billion. And iOS developers have been raking in the cash, earning more than $100 billion since the App Store opened, CEO Tim Cook announced at WWDC 2018.