The Apple Beat: 6 years on, the App Store remains the standard in curated ecosystems
Friday, July 11, 2014 at 7:44AM 
By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla
It's hard to believe that the original iPhone didn't ship with any 'real' apps and that it took over a year for Apple to consider opening its device to developers and third-party applications. Six years on, the App Store has evolved into the best example of a tightly curated app ecosystem.
Apple's success with the iOS App Store owes a lot to Apple's experience with iTunes although apps and music and movies are fundamentally different, the way these were presented was familiar enough to users who were buying apps to enhance their mobile devices. The App Store was a quick success, it inspired the Mac App store and made it possible to buy applications directly from a Mac and, even better, application updates are now handled automatically in the background.
More importantly, the App Store has become a storefront for thousands of developers and their mobile apps. It is by far the most profitable platform for mobile developers. 75 billion app downloads have been made in the past six years.