Can nothing stop the iPhone™? Our good friends at Apple® announced this week that 2 billion applications have been downloaded for the iPhone™ (and iPod touch®). According to an Apple news release (yes – those still exist) “Apple announced that more than two billion apps have been downloaded from its revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world. There are now more than 85,000 apps available to the more than 50 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide and over 125,000 developers in Apple’s iPhone Developer Program.”
Two beel-llion applications!
While this is, indeed, an amazing achievement, it really gets at the very heart of what is driving the adoption of technology and our vast immersion into social media.
It wasn’t that long ago that we could get any phone as long as it was black. Heaven forbid the wrath of Ma Bell if anyone tried to hook up anything to the phone network that wasn’t authorized, let alone pick what applications we wanted (call waiting and caller ID took years to reach critical mass).
Fast forward to today’s Brave New World of always on, always connected, blended lifestyles thanks to our mobile devices. Facebook and Twitter become even more pervasive and juiced up on the iPhone and other mobile handhelds. There’s nothing more empowering than giving users the ability to personalize their devices, applications and networks. Hats off to Apple and the App Store on this amazing achievement. And if you ever need to borrow my iHandy Level to hang a picture, I’ll be glad to lend you my iPhone.
