The original 2007 iPhone had only one screenful of software icons, believe it or not. You couldn’t install any new ones of your own. It took a whole year before Apple opened the iPhone app store, making it possible for the masses to download and install new apps (programmes) and, in the process, creating a whole new gadget category.
The app store changed everything. Why just make calls, when you could auto-tune your singing voice, play virtual Ping-Pong or summon bodily sounds on command? There are 225,000 apps on the iPhone store and 60,000 on Google’s Android store, and that’s just the beginning. Those statistics will be out of date by the end of this week, or even the end of this sentence. ECONOMICTIMES