Evolution of Mobile Apps Over the Years

Mobile applications have become such an important part of lives. From adding an alarm to wake up every morning for work to killing time with games, you can download any application nowadays to make your life that much easier. However, there was a time that apps were just a mere dream and developers could not even think of downloading files, let alone heavy applications that weighed hundreds of megabytes. The mention of applications and their concept was first introduced by the man who revolutionised the technological industry with his product innovations in various departments: Steve Jobs.

Before the launch of the first Macintosh way back in 1983, Jobs was the first to talk about a nascent version of what we call the AppStore today, by stating “It would be a little like a record store, where software would be downloaded over phone lines.” With his legendary vision and willingness to push the envelope every time he would take the stage, he led the launch of the first application ecosystem called the App Store with another historical technological achievement we now call the iPhone.

Before the iPhone’s launch in 2007, a lot of developers tried their hand in making something similar but the technology and awareness available at that time prevented them from making any major breakthrough. The pioneer in this project building endeavour was none other IBM, who launched the first smartphone ever in 1994. Simon, as they named it, was devoid of any type of structure similar to the App Store but had basic applications like Address Book, Calculator, Calendar, Mail, Note Pad, and Sketch Pad which wowed the audiences of that time.

Sadly, the phone’s exorbitant price and lack of marketing led to its downfall but it set the bar for other phones to improve upon. Long before sophisticated coding would lead to feature rich phones with electronic data managementsystems and storage capabilities, Nokia came out with the legendary game, Snake. It was one of the first games that came pre-loaded for a mass produced mobile device and became an instant favorite amongst the public.

Developers kept riffing on these innovations by adding other features like the now-standard QWERTY keypad and reminders along with real-time syncing of your contacts with your e-mail IDs. Global customer support also became important for application development with call centers in Dubai, Saudi and other such cities and countries contributing in the same.

The oncoming of the iPhone changed the definition of apps forever because it was the first time a mobile ecosystem supported third party apps that could be downloaded separately and did not come preloaded. This gave the average individual a sense of choice that was missing in other phones. With other mobile platforms like Android and Windows also having their own app stores, the app revolution does not seem to be dying down any time soon in the near future.