The six-year-old App Store is changing the world

Tencent Technology News July 11, local time Thursday, Apple App Store officially launched the sixth anniversary of the application store. At present, the App Store can provide millions of downloaded applications, and it is precisely in the App Store that a broad application economy has evolved from a niche market to a global one.

According to Frank Gillett, an analyst with Forrester Research, a market research firm, worldwide sales have hit $ 30 billion since 2008. In addition, he also said that application sales will reach 100 billion US dollars by 2020. However, downloading is just a small part of the application economy, and the size of the market will be even greater if membership fees, services and hardware are included.

Many companies compete in the application economy, but the two largest platforms currently are Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store.

According to App Annie, an app tracking agency, the App Store currently has 1.2 million apps, compared to 1.5 million for the Play Store. Driven by emerging markets such as Brazil and Russia, Google Play Store's application downloads hit the App Store's first overtake last year.

However, if you compare the profitability of both, Apple is clearly superior. According to statistics provided by App Annie, Apple's application platform last year generated more than double Google's revenue. The reason for this is that Apple users often spend more on applications.

However, whether it is Apple or Google, the largest download driving force or game applications. The most revenue-generating app for 2013 was Puzzle & Dragons by Japanese gaming company Gungho, which offers free downloads but reaps money from in-app purchases. As of now, about 35 million users downloaded the game.

Dan Costa, chief editor of PCMIT.com, believes Uber is the typical beneficiary of the app economy.

"Without it, Uber's service will not exist in the digital world at all," Costa said, "and its emergence has subverted the real market and real services and has allowed the digital field to leapfrog into the real world, making it truly lucrative Products, other applications can follow this pattern, because this is the most promising application type. "

App Store development process

Nowadays, the development of the App Store can be described as smooth. However, it is hard to imagine that at the time when the first iPhone was released, there was no App Store yet. At that time, the iPhone had built-in applications and web application access through a browser.

On March 6, 2008, Apple released the Application Development Kit (SDK) for iPhone and released its App Store App Store to third-party local applications. As a result of this series of initiatives, mobile software designed for platforms like Nokia Symbian, Palm OS, and Microsoft's Windows Mobile is as cool as ever.

How can companies such as Nokia, Palm, Microsoft and Blackberry stop going and invest their resources in opening their own software stores? Although the company's product user base was larger than Apple, but no one has made the App Store that success.

Currently, the only Google Store that rivals the App Store. Although the Play Store boasts more apps and more users, the Play Store lags behind the App Store in terms of overall quality, popularity, and exclusive smartphone apps. Developers keen on the App Store, first of all lies in the platform to provide better research and development tools, based on the unified release of user devices operating system and rare hardware fragmentation issues.

Just a year and a half after the App Store was released, Apple extended its reach to support the newly released iPad. At the beginning of iPad release, it could enjoy the application specially built for it, which was unique in the field of tablet computer at that time.

Later that year, Apple announced the extension of the App Store to Mac. January 2011, Independent of iTunes, the Mac App Store, which specializes in Mac applications, was born.

At present, Apple released its own system through the Mac App Store and application updates. In addition, the Mac App Store, like the iTunes iOS App Store, supports iCloud, which automatically downloads purchased software on users' Mac hardware products.

In iOS 8, Apple announced plans to further support Family Sharing, which includes sharing purchased apps and allowing parents to remotely monitor and approve downloads and purchases of apps.

At the Worldwide Developer Conference last month, Apple announced that the App Store has 75 billion downloads of apps over the last six years.

The App Store has brought a total of $ 15 billion in revenue to 9 million registered Apple developers and has applications in 155 countries.

According to a report Morgan Stanley released two months ago, the revenue generated by the App Store is expected to outperform the iTunes Store later this year. (Lee Road)