More Videos
- Cisco Jumps; Rest of Market to Follow?
- Call It 'Microsoft Math'
- Intel in the Anti-Trust Crosshairs, but Why?
- Apple Apps—Now More Than 100K
- WoW Fights New Front in China
- Smart Phone Competition Heats Up. Again.
- A Tale of Two Smart Phone Makers
- Avatar Hype Soars Thanks to Tech
- AMD's Ruiz Gets Tripped by Idle Chit-Chat
- Amazon is to eBay What Google is to Yahoo
- Tommy Lee, Medical Tourism and Nasty Santa, Your Emails
- U.S. Markets Gain 3% for the Week Despite 10.2% Unemployment
- Disney's 'Carol' Tests Widest 3-D Release Ever
- Stimulus II? Jobs Tax Credit=Cash For Clunkers
- Rockwell Automation Earnings: What Options Are Saying
- Gold Will Touch Higher Lows and Higher Highs: Analyst
- Is Misery Alive And Well in Your Office?
- Consumers Haven't Changed, They Are Just Pickier
- Watch Foreclosures, Seriously
- For the Jobless, 10% is Harder Than Before
- Week Ahead: Stocks Search for Catalyst in Quiet Week
- Outlook: Dollar Likely to Ride Higher on Bleak Jobs Report
- Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Says Net Income Tripled
- Cramer: Earnings, IPOs Dominate Next Week
- Buying Fear: How to Own Volatility
- Administration Rejects Plan to Buy Fannie Mae Credits
- Consumers Haven't Changed —They Just Got Pickier
- Want the Homebuyer's Tax Credit? Here Are Some Tips
RSS FEED
Tech Check
Text Size 
 |
Courtesy of Apple IPhone 3G |
If you made it through the fine print, you may have noticed that there are now 10,000 applications available for iPhone and the iPod Touch available on the App Store. Nothing new there, either.
What is new, and absolutely stunning, is the small print at the bottom of today's ad. Apple [AAPL
Loading...
()
] now says that iPhone users have "downloaded over 300 million" applications from the App Store, from games to business programs. Why is that stunning? Consider that on the company's conference call on October 21, Apple disclosed that the following day, Apple expected users to download their 200 millionth app. Which means, as of today, users have downloaded a staggering 100 million apps in just the past 6 weeks.
So all that talk of a "bubble" in apps demand was just that, talk! Experts expected an initial big shot in the arm, and that demand would trail off as the weeks passed by. These figures suggest that the app store is only gaining momentum, and it's another big reason for users to choose iPhone over Research in Motion's [RIMM
Loading...
()
] BlackBerry, which has a nascent app store of its own, but is nowhere near as robust as Apple's. The iPhone/iPod/iTunes/App Store eco-system just makes it that much easier to stay inside the Apple world, rather than having to search high and low on the net for music, movies and apps from one site to the next. And when it comes to new technology, "easy" is the name of the game.
"It's unbelievable," says Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster. "It's a differentiator. We think in '09, it's going to be a $1 billion market place and Apple will probably take about 30 percent of that. There's virtually no operating expense for them. They just approve the apps. It increases our confidence that" Apple can make these numbers.
I have written extensively about the importance of the Apple App Store to the iPhone; that iPhone is more a platform than merely another Apple device. The App Store could someday (maybe sooner than we thought?) match, or even supplant iTunes as a top profit center, and something that likely hasn't been figured into many earnings models. At least not to the extent that the store is growing today.
IPhone's momentum only stands to gain traction as more and more developers come up with new programs for customers to buy. It's a device that doesn't need conventional, hardware upgrading from Apple if there's a massive, grassroots movement to update the device by offering new programs. Thousands of them. And once again, the Apple model is working. Big time.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes