In the beginning there was nothing. Then, Steve Jobs created iPhone and opened a new digital market place called App (or application) store in 2007.
Five years on, this market place has become an estimated $20-billion economy with $4 billion going to app developers across the globe. It created five lakh jobs in the US alone.
Apple itself has registered 2,500 crore downloads of various applications from its store across its phones, tablets and computers. Google lost no time in creating Android market that has become a platform for most of Apple's rivals in phones and tablets.
Research in Motion (RIM), which sells BlackBerry phones and tablets, has opened its own app store. Nokia has Ovi store and Microsoft too has its own window to offer applications.
An application offers an instant access to a service or a utility or a game, adding value to the device. In all, there are over 10 lakh applications available across all these platforms and many other independent vendors.
This, in fact, has become an economy of its own. App developers in garages, drawing rooms of their houses and small offices in towns and cities have begun to develop applications and put them on one or more of these platforms.
For device makers and service providers, this is a godsend opportunity. As they can attract users without having to spend a lot on development and testing of these applications. For app developers, this is an unbelievably large market place – they can virtually get access to every single Internet-enabled phones, tablets and PCs.
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Among all app downloads, apps developed for Apple get a better chance. “In India, Apple community is small with over one million devices. But each of it witness downloads of 20-25 applications on an average. Apple users are very active,” Mr Kalyan Manyam, Chief Executive Officer of Mojostreet (an application that offers location-based info tips on discounts and offers), told Business Line .
The company, with 80,000 app downloads in three months of its launch in India, witnessed 6,000 downloads of its Apple version in just one month.