Do you remember the world before the APP Store? They have become so much a part of the digital lives of so many people, that it is hard to remember what it was like without them. It was however only five years ago today that the first APP Store, the Apple Inc. App Store, appeared as an update to the companies already massively popular music management software, iTunes. This stroke of genius by Apple was to lead to an explosion in popularity of the iPhone and later make the iPad the must have gadget.
Apple is noting this anniversary today with a link on the homepage to five free Apps & five free games for everyone.
Apple were again the first to launch a store specifically for Apps and games, but of course the competition were never going to be that far behind. Since the launch five years ago along has come, Google ‘Play’, Blackberry ‘World’ and Microsoft something called ‘Windows Phone’! Apple had tried to protect and trademark ‘App Store’ and did succeed in keeping it to them selves for a while, until Amazon launched the ‘Amazon App Store’ alongside the Kindle Fire Tablet.
The legal case has been dragging along since the launch and only last week, in the latest round of negotiations, the two companies again failed to come to an agreement. Apple maintains its position on the trademark ‘App Store’ and Amazon maintains that ‘App’ is a generic description for an Application on a computer and that the term has been around since the 1980s and that the trademark should not be applicable. It is difficult to predict what the outcome will be and when but in the meantime the Apple App Store is doing very well and quietly celebrating.
