Infographic: The Evolution (History) of The App Stores

The history of the app stores: from 2008 to 2017

This week we are super proud to present the infographic of the complete history of the Apple App Store and Google Play.

The infographic includes all the main events since the first opening of the stores, and its growth, featuring the milestones of number of available apps, downloads and payouts to developers.

We have also put a special focus on the changes related to App Store Optimisation: changes in search algorithm, store listing elements, new categories and promotions.

We hope you enjoy this data! 🙂

Special thanks to TechCrunch for documenting the whole history of the app stores, and Statista for extensive data on the apps available on both stores and its growth year by year.

Infographic: The evolution of the app stores

Both opened in 2008, the Apple App Store, and, back then, Android Market, at first were dedicated exclusively to mobile applications. With the appearance of new devices and arrival of tablets in 2010, the stores became more diverse, the App Store providing apps and games for both iPhone and iPad, while Android Market has turned into Google Play Store and changed the concept completely, having added to their portfolio e-books, magazines, music, and video, supporting a huge variety of devices and opening a Webstore.

By 2012, there was more than 1,000,000 apps in the stores, combined, and this number was growing exponentially up to 5,3 million apps that are available now in 2017. In total from both stores, apps had been downloaded around 220 billion times. In 2016 only from Apple app developers have earned $20 billion.

See the evolution of this impressive numbers and the changes in the stores, laying behind them, in our infographic:

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