The Apple AppStore is a service intended for the iPhone multimedia and Internet enabled smartphones, the iPod Touch portable media player, and iPad tablet computers, which allows users to browse and download desired applications from iTunes which were created using te iOS SDK and published through Apple. These applications are included in different categories, and depending on their price tag, they can be either free to download or at a specific cost.
Apple agreed to automatically send 70 % of the revenues from an application to the one who created and published it, so only 30 % would remain at Apple. The AppStore was opened on July 10, 2008, profiting from an iOS update that was released on the same day. One day later, on July 11, Apple released the iPhone 3G which came with iOS 2.0 and support for the AppStore. The iPhone 3G and iPod Touch also came with the possibility of downloading a new firmware. As of October 2010, the AppStore is officially the home of over 300.000 Apple approved third party applications, which registered a total of over 7 billion downloads, and a medium profit of 700$ per application. The average costs seem to range from $15.000 to $50.000. After the great success Apple had with its AppStore, many competitors developed similar services of their own, and the term “AppStore” came to be used for any similar service, even tough Apple claims trademark over the name.
On October 20, 2010, Apple presented another service called Mac App Store, which is similar to the one for iOS intended device, but it offers only Machintosh applications. The AppStore is accessible to the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad through an application with the same name, which is the only way you could download native applications directly on your iOS device. In time several internet applications similar to the AppStore were released, but unlike the actual AppStore, they didn’t offer very much functionality or comfort. Another way to download applications to your iPhone for example is by jailbreaking it.
The proccess of jailbreaking comes with an application called Cydia, which is like the AppStore, but for jailbroken devices, and you can use it to download all kinds of applications. Although these AppStore copies are available, the AppStore remains the only option for downloading original content directly to your iOS based device without violating the terms of agreement specified in the device’s warranty.
When it comes to using AppStore on the computer, you can always access it by using the iTunes software. Apple asks of its customers to only execute applications obtained via iTunes and AppStore,that are verified and aproved by themselves. Doing otherwise could lead to serious software malfunctions that are not covered by the device’s warranty.