Happy Birthday Apple App Store

The Apple App Store is just over a year old today. A statement that the company released last week states that the App Store has received over 1.5 billion downloads from over 65,000 available apps. Pretty startling numbers from such a young service.

Oddly, there are about 100,000 app developers for the 65,000 available. A few things may be going on here, either this points to a 35,000 app rejection rate or many app developers are waiting on the sideline to submit their product. Can't count out multiple submission from developers as well.

iPhone App FlyChat Says Go Ahead Talk To Strangers

FlyChat is a new iPhone app that allows you to converse with strangers who share common interests. Think Twitter in an audible form. Sounds harmless, but I think this app could get a bit weird.

Here is how it works: you type in a message and attach it to a "fly". That message then is sent to your selected stranger and global location, That individual from a far off land will then have access to your profile information including picture. The recipient will then have the ability to ignore or respond to your message. The company would like us to think of this app as a “high-tech messages in a bottle.”

This type of social network focuses on making new connections with less emphasis on your current friends list.

An app like this could be useful to the traveler who does not know anyone in their destination city. Maybe they could get useful information from locals about restaurants, hotels etc... Obviously I would not recommend meeting a stranger from another country for lunch, that is definitely creepy.

FlyChat is available in the App Store for $1.99

Apple IPhone Application Downloads Top 1.5 Billion

Apple Inc. said users of the iPhone and iPod Touch media player have downloaded more than 1.5 billion programs from the company’s online store, signaling demand for the applications is accelerating.

The pace of downloads has picked up since Apple reached the 1 billion mark in April. The App Store now has more than 65,000 free and paid programs available, up from more than 500 when the site was introduced a year ago, Apple said in a statement today.

Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs said the application site’s success will make it “very hard” for competitors to catch up. Research In Motion Ltd. and Palm Inc. set up stores in recent months offering programs for their devices and lag behind Apple in the number of applications available.

RIM, which opened its App World in April, said the number of programs on the site doubled to about 2,000 as of July 6. Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, doesn’t provide download figures.

Palm, which began selling the Pre handset in June, has about 30 programs on its site. Several thousand developers have applied to build programs for the Pre, Pam Deziel, vice president of developer relations, said last month.

Apple, which also makes the Macintosh computer, rose 76 cents to $143.10 at 9:37 a.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The Cupertino, California-based company’s shares had gained 67 percent this year before today.

Market-Share Gains

The iPhone went on sale in June 2007, and Apple added the App Store after developers clamored for a way to create programs for the device. Apple is the gatekeeper for the site, approving which programs are distributed. It takes a 30 percent cut of each application sold and distributes free programs at no cost.

In June, Apple released a faster version of the iPhone, selling more than 1 million in the first weekend. There are now more than 40 million iPhone and iPod Touch users who can download games and programs for the phone that do everything from tracking the weather to simulating a Zippo lighter to keeping tabs on calories consumed.

The iPhone’s share of global sales of so-called smart phones doubled to 10.8 percent in the first quarter, outpacing RIM’s growth, according to research firm Gartner Inc. RIM boosted its share to 19.9 percent. Nokia Oyj dominated the market with 41 percent, while Palm ranked outside the top five.

To contact the reporter on this story: Connie Guglielmo in San Francisco at cguglielmo1@bloomberg.net.

article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=aUsY1IZ5TtyE#

iPhone Now Has over 13,000 Game

You know how your birth was a miracle, because of the odds against a specific sperm fertilizing your mom's egg? Now that there are 13,000 frigging games on the iPhone, how far are we from a comparable setup in the App Store? How long until the simple act of playing The Moron Test rather than other games is considered a miracle in and of itself?Do you realize that the number of apps has doubled since March? Doubled. If the App Store continues that exponential rate of growth, games will outnumber humans in about 5 years, and you know what that means: Yep, Skynet.

article source: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/08/there-are-13-000-iphone-games-now/