Screenshot of the desktop App Store in iTunes
Developer(s)	Apple Inc.
Initial release	July 10, 2008; 3 years ago  (2008-07-10)
Development status	Active / 725,700+ apps (as of February 2012[update]) 25 billion apps downloaded (as of March 2012[update]).[1]
Operating system	iOS, Mac OS X Tiger or later Windows XP or later
Platform	iPhone, iPod touch, iPad
Type	Digital distribution, software update
License	Proprietary freeware
Website	www.apple.com/itunes

The Apple App Store is a digital application distribution platform for iOS developed and maintained by Apple Inc. The service allows users to browse and download applications from the iTunes Store that were developed with the iOS SDK or Mac SDK and published through Apple Inc.

Depending on the application, they are available either for free or at a cost. The applications can be downloaded directly to a target device, or downloaded onto a personal computer (PC) or Macintosh via iTunes. 30 percent of revenue from the store goes to Apple, and 70 percent go to the producer of the app.^[2]

History[link]

The App Store opened on July 10, 2008 via an update to iTunes. On July 11, the iPhone 3G was launched and came pre-loaded with iOS 2.0.1 with App Store support; new iOS 2.0.1 firmware for iPhone and iPod Touch was also made available via iTunes.^[3] As of February 10, 2012 (2012 -02-10)^[update], there are at least 725,700+ third-party apps officially available on the App Store.^[4]

As of January 18, 2011, the App Store had over 9.9 billion downloads, which was announced via the company's "10 Billion App Countdown".^[5] At 10:26 am GMT on Saturday, January 22, 2011,^[6] the 10 billionth app was downloaded from Apple App Store. As of July 2011, 200 million iOS users downloaded over 15 billion apps from its App Store.^[7][8]

The mean revenue per application is estimated to be US$8,700, although data is not publicly available.^[9] As of May 2011, Apple approved its 500,000th app and 37 percent of all apps are free with the average price $3.64.^[10] The distribution of price follows a power law distribution (the Zipf–Mandelbrot law). Prices can be freely chosen by sellers at multiple of US$1 minus 1 cent (99¢, $1.99, and so on).

After the success of Apple's App Store, and the launch of similar services by its competitors, the term "app store" has been adopted to refer to any similar service for mobile devices.^{[11][12][13][14]} However, Apple applied for a trademark on the term App Store in 2008^[15][16] which was tentatively approved in 2011.^[17] Later, in June 2011, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton, who is presiding over Apple's case against Amazon, said she'll "probably" deny Apple's motion that seeks to bar the Web retailer from using the "App Store" name.^[18][19][20] Later on July 6, Apple was denied preliminary injunction against Amazon's Appstore by a federal judge.^[21]

The term app has become a popular buzzword; in January 2011, app was awarded the honor of being 2010's "Word of the Year" by the American Dialect Society.^[22] Apple does not hold a trademark on, or claim exclusive rights to the term app, which has been used as shorthand for "application" since at least 2002, for example Google Apps (first introduced in 2006).^[23]

On October 20, 2010, Apple announced the Mac App Store which was eventually launched on January 7, 2011. It is similar to the one for iOS devices, only it has applications designed for Mac computers.^[24] The Mac App Store is only accessible by using Mac OS X Snow Leopard or Mac OS X Lion.

The App Store is accessible from the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad via an iOS application by the same name. It is also the only way to directly download native applications onto an iOS device without jailbreaking the device. Web applications can be installed on these devices, bypassing the App Store entirely, but they tend to have less functionality. The store is also accessible through iTunes, and then on any operating system for which iTunes is provided (Mac OS X and Windows).^[25]

In February 2011, Apple announced its new subscription based service, which will allow publishers the freedom to set the length and price of subscriptions. Previously, new magazine or news releases were sold on a per release basis. The new service allows publishers to sell content directly through their apps, allowing users to receive new content over specified periods of time. Furthermore, Apple will begin allowing publishers to not only distribute and/or sell their applications from iTunes, where revenues will continue to be shared (70 percent for the publisher, 30 percent for Apple), but also allow them to distribute their subscriptions directly from their websites, where no revenue will be shared with Apple.^[26]

iPhone SDK[link]

The Software Development Kit for iPhone OS was announced at the iPhone Software Roadmap event on March 6, 2008. The SDK allows developers running Mac OS X 10.5.4 or higher on an Intel Mac to create applications using Xcode that will natively run on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. A beta version was released after the event and a final version was released in July 2008 alongside the iPhone 3G.^[27]

This major Roadmap event (coupled with a large distribution program for 3rd-party developers), later became known as the iPhone Developer Program, which currently offers two distribution tracks for 3rd-party developers: Standard, and Enterprise.^[28]

Applications distributed through the standard program can be sold exclusively through the iTunes Store on Mac and Windows, or on the App Store on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.^[28] Developers who publish their applications on the App Store will receive 70 percent of sales revenue, and will not have to pay any distribution costs for the application. However, an annual fee is required to use the iPhone SDK and upload applications to the store.^[27]

Applications developed through the enterprise program, officially the "iOS Enterprise Developer Program" (iDEP), are exclusively for institutional use and do not get published on the App Store. This allows corporations, non-profits and government agencies to develop proprietary "in-house" applications not for public release.^[28] The enterprise program was updated September 14, 2010, to allow any organization with a DUNS number to join. Prior to this date, only organizations with 500 or more employees could join the enterprise program.

To run an application on the iPhone, the application must be signed. This signed certificate is only granted by Apple after the developer has first developed the software through either the US$99/year Standard package or the US$299/year Enterprise package with the iOS SDK.^[27]

Number of launched applications[link]

On July 10, 2008, Apple CEO Steve Jobs told USA Today that the App Store contained 500 third-party applications for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, and of these 25 percent were free.^[29] These third party applications range from business to game applications, entertainment to educational applications, and many more applications available for free or for sale. On July 11, 2008 the store opened, allowing users to buy applications and transfer them to an iPhone or iPod Touch with the iPhone 2.0 software update, which became available through iTunes on the same day. Ten million applications were downloaded the first weekend.^[30]

On January 16, 2009, Apple announced on its website that 500 million applications had been downloaded.^[31] The billionth application was downloaded on April 23, 2009.^[32] In March 2012, the number of apps downloaded reached 25 billion.^{[citation needed]}

Unlike the apps that come standard on the iPhone, apps downloaded from the App Store can be removed by the user at a future date.

Revenue share[link]

Besides downloading volumes, the App Store's relatively high revenue of US$1782 million in 2010 may be attributed to it having only 28 percent of free apps, in comparison to Google Play's over 57 percent of free apps. As a result, both Nokia's Ovi Store and BlackBerry's App World, both of which have only 26 percent free apps, also pull in higher revenues than Google Play despite having much lower downloading volumes.^[33]

Milestones[link]

iPad applications[link]

The iPad launched in April 2010 with over 3000 applications designed for the iPad. By December 2010, just eight months after the release of the iPad, over 50,000 apps were available for the device.

As of July 2011, 16 months after the iPad launched, there were over 100,000 apps available at the App Store designed specifically for the device.^[56]

On July 7, 2011, Apple announced that over 15 billion apps had been downloaded from the iOS app store.^[7] But, micro level information on the number of downloads of each ranked application has not been made available. To help app producers with their marketing effort and help researchers in better understanding the Apple's iOS app store, a recent research study^[57] has tried to estimate the model that converts the app rank to daily downloads. Researchers Garg and Telang from Carnegie Mellon University found that the app downloads follow a Pareto distribution and can be estimated using the equations:
iPad_app_downloads = 9,525 * paid_app_rank^(−0.903)
iPhone_app_downloads = 52,511 * paid_app_rank^(−0.944)
NOTE: this claim has not been verified by Apple or any other market research organization.

At the end of November 2011, Apple advertised in holiday newsletter of online Apple Store there are more than 140,000 iPad apps available.

Most popular apps[link]

In April 2009, Apple announced the apps which had the most number of downloads since the store was launched. Among paid apps, Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D, by Activision Publishing, was ranked first, while Facebook enjoyed the same position among free apps, followed by Google Earth.^[58]

The top 10 most popular Paid and Free apps across all categories are listed below:^[59]

Application ratings[link]

Apple rates applications worldwide based on their content, and determines the age group for which each is appropriate. According to the iPhone OS 3.0 launch event, the iPhone will allow blocking of objectionable apps in the iPhone's settings. The following are the ratings that Apple has detailed:

App approval process[link]

Applications are subject to approval by Apple, as outlined in the SDK agreement, for basic reliability testing and other analysis. Applications may still be distributed "ad-hoc" if they are rejected, by the author manually submitting a request to Apple to license the application to individual iPhones, although Apple may withdraw the ability for authors to do this at a later date.

Non-disclosure agreements (NDA) have always forbidden developers from publishing the content of their rejection notices, but Apple has now started labeling their rejection letters with an NDA warning THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE IS UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE. Apple later changed the NDA citing that "it has created too much of a burden on developers" but they did not reverse the decision to forbid publication of rejection notices. Some applications are not available outside the US App Store at the request of the developer. Since so many developers have published rejection emails Apple now most often call submitters to verbally tell them their rejection notice.

In addition, Apple has removed software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) from the App Store after complaints from one of the program's developers, claiming that the App Store's terms of service are incompatible with the GPL.^[60][61]

Enterprise App Stores[link]

Because Apple's App Store is for consumers, companies are unable to distribute in-house apps on the App Store. Under Apple's iOS Developer Enterprise Program companies can publish in-house apps using an Enterprise App Store^[62] with systems such as AppWave,^[63] AppCentral,^[64] Apperian EASE,^[65] Appaloosa Store^[66] Partnerpedia or a Mobile Device Management platform such as Sybase Afaria.

Apps published with Apple's iOS Developer Enterprise Program are still subject to Apple's control via the controversial kill switch,^[67] where Apple can revoke a publisher's digital certificate and thereby "kill" the app on user devices. However, there is no evidence that this has been done in the enterprise environment.

Similar services for other devices[link]

Competitors also have their own stores for mobile applications. Palm Inc. published an application store similar to the App Store for Palm devices^[68] and announced the App Catalog for webOS on the Palm Pre that was released on June 6, 2009. Another platform, Google Play ( former Android Market ) is used in conjunction with Google's Android operating system. Microsoft has released Windows Phone Marketplace, an application store for their Windows Phone platform.

Nokia released The "Ovi Store"^[69] (which replaced its earlier "Download!" application, which predated Apple's App Store) for its S60 and S40 based mobile devices. Samsung has created Samsung Apps, primarily to cater for its own Bada OS, but also with support for certain other Samsung devices. Research in Motion (RIM) also launched its application store BlackBerry App World.^[70]

The Nintendo DSi is able to connect to an online store called the "DSi Shop", along with Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) and Playstation Vita being able to connect to PlayStation Store to download games, etc. The Nintendo 3DS also has its own application distribution platform, called the Nintendo eShop.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website, App Store on iTunes, requires iTunes
• App Store Downloads (iTunes not needed)
• Official website on Apple.com
• Official iPhone developer site
• Realtime App Store Stats by country, genre and segment
• App Store on Twitter
• [2]

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Look up app in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

App(s) commonly refers to:

• Mobile apps, applications software for mobile devices
• Application software, also called an app, software for specific purposes

App(s) or APP may also refer to:

Computers[link]

• APP (file format), a filename extension for applications on several platforms
• Adjusted Peak Performance, a metric to measure computing performance in 64-bit processors and above
• Google Apps, a service from Google providing independently customizable versions of several Google products under a custom domain name
• Mac App Store, a digital distribution platform for Mac OS X applications
• Atom Publishing Protocol (or AtomPub), an Atom (standard) protocol to create and update web resources

Organizations[link]

• African Prisons Project, a UK based NGO
• Alberta Provincial Police, a Canadian police force from 1917-1932
• Asia Pulp & Paper
• Associated Press of Pakistan
• Asia-Pacific Partnership, an international environmental protection alliance

Medicine[link]

• Amyloid precursor protein, a protein fragment associated with some neurological disorders
• Amyloid precursor protein secretase, an enzyme responsible for cleaving the amyloid precursor protein

Political parties[link]

• All People's Party (disambiguation)
• Animal Protection Party, a British political party
• Anticlerical Progress Party REASON, a Polish political party
• People's Progressive Alliance (Mauritania) (Alliance populaire progressiste)
• Australian Protectionist Party, an Australian nationalist, far-right political party

Railway codes[link]

• Appleby railway station (Cumbria), England, in National Rail's code
• Appleton, Wisconsin, in Amtrak's three-letter code

Education[link]

• Assessing Pupils' Progress, an assessment methodology used in schools in England and Wales
• Advanced Placement Program
• Appalachian State University, a university in Boone, North Carolina, United States

Other[link]

• Appetizers or Hors d'oeuvre

People with surname App or Apps[link]

• Alfred Apps, Canadian lawyer
• Austin App (1902–1984), a German-American academic and Holocaust denier
• Deon Apps (born 1987), Australian rugby league player
• Geoff Apps (born 1949), English mountain bike pioneer
• Gillian Apps (born 1983), Canadian ice hockey player and daughter of Syl Apps Jr
• Roy Apps (born 1951), British screenwriter, dramatist and children’s author
• Syl Apps (1915-1988), Canadian pole-vaulter and ice hockey player
• Syl Apps, Jr (born 1947), Canadian ice hockey player and son of Syl Apps
• Syl Apps III (born 1976), Canadian ice hockey player and son of Syl Apps Jr
• Timothy App (born 1948), an American painter
• Urs App (born 1949), a Swiss academic
• Apps family, Canadian ice hockey dynasty

See also[link]

• All pages beginning with "App"
• All pages beginning with "Apps"
• All pages beginning with "APP"
• All pages with titles containing "app"
• All pages with titles containing "apps"

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Look up ios in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

iOS is Apple Inc.'s mobile operating system

IOS may also refer to: