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Neon Tommy - Annenberg digital news

App Store Celebrates Five Years

Sara Clayton |
July 10, 2013 | 1:53 p.m. PDT

Staff Reporter

July 10th, 2013, marks the fifth year since Apple officially launched the App Store, and the Cupertino company is celebrating by making 10 of its popular apps free for a limited time.

On July 3, Apple sent members of the media a timeline of the App Store’s milestones, highlighting notable events including the 50 billionth download made on May 15.

A number of popular apps such as Dots are featured in this commemorative logo.
A number of popular apps such as Dots are featured in this commemorative logo.

As of Monday, a number of popular apps including Tiny Wings, Infinity Blade II and Over were all marked down and currently cost nothing to download. The sale has brought these apps to the top of the free apps chart, beating out former frontrunners including Despicable Me and Candy Crush Saga.

Considering Apple's major successes with the App Store alone, it's incredible to think that Apple was initially apprehensive about allowing others to develop apps. But after Apple found that a number of developers were creating their own apps for the iPhone, the App Store released a Software Development Kit on March 2008, and four months later, apps for iOS debuted.

With more than 900,000 apps, the App Store is still going strong, thanks to disgruntled birds, sugary puzzles and filtered photos.

 

Reach Staff Reporter Sara Clayton here. Follow her here.



 

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