Apple's App Store Turns 5

This week has commemorated the fifth year of Apple’s App Store since its launch in 2008. Apple have decided to reward its customers by giving away apps from some of the most popular and highest rated games.

Since the App Store’s launch in 2008, which happened the day before the release of the iPhone 3G, Apple have continued to grow their ground-breaking App Store with over 50 billion apps being downloaded throughout this five year stretch.

CEO Tim Cook was staggered by this amount and did say that there has been nothing like the App Store that has existed, changing the world of technology. A big statement, but who are we to argue!

50 billion apps downloaded is a huge amount but this has been a huge benefit to the developers too. In fact, Tim Cook has said that Apple have paid out over $10 billion to the developers of these apps, who have received around 70% of all revenue made from them. This does actually mean that the App Store has clawed in revenue of around $14.3 billion since its launch, some five years ago.

Apple felt it is time they gave something back to the customer’s for all of their loyalty over these last five years and have done so by giving away apps and games all week. The five apps that the App Store has provided its customers include Barefoot Word Atlas, Day One, Over, Traktor DJ and How To Cook Everything.

The five games included Badland, Infinity Blade II, Where’s My Water? Tiny Wings and finally Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP.  Nearly all of these games and apps have in fact been rated either four stars or higher (only one not being rated quite as high), which is great considering five stars is the highest rating possible.

Although the App Store is celebrating its fifth year anniversary, we are under no illusion that we can be looking at more celebrations over the coming years and who knows; we might even see the decade of the App Store. But for now, Happy Birthday App Store!