15 years since the first Android Market: The app that changed the game

It’s been 15 years since Google introduced the Android Market (now the Google Play Store) on the T-Mobile G1 or HTC Dream. And 15 years since the landscape of the mobile app ecosystem changed forever, from a few billion dollars to a $6 trillion-plus economy.

Few apps or services have impacted our modern lives as much as the Android Market. Only Apple’s App Store, launched a few months earlier in 2008, can claim a similar impact. So join me as I reminisce about what it was like before app stores were on our phones and how Google and Apple convinced the digital world that there was a plan for that mantra.

Before 2008, finding and downloading apps for your smartphone wasn’t easy. I spent days scouring two independent online stores, GetJar and Handango, looking for new apps that might pique my interest. Visit random sites online, just in case you find something interesting. Other people had to use operator-specific app stores. Imagine letting Verizon, AT&T, Orange, or Vodafone dictate what apps you can install, how much they cost, and how much developers get paid for them. *Insert audible breath.*

At that time there was no program discovery and monitoring. The app selection was also very limited and mostly revolved around opening or editing Office documents and PDF files on the go. Security was an interesting, albeit foreign, concept: you clicked download and hoped for the best. Paying for apps wasn’t easy either. I remember jumping through a thousand hoops to buy some medical dictionaries for my Nokia 3250 Xpress Music on Handango. It just wouldn’t accept my foreign credit card.

And it won’t let us even mention the update. You bought it, that’s all. Just like when you had to buy a new Encarta DVD every year, you’ll have to pay full price for a new version of any program you’ve already purchased. If it has a new version, if it has a new version, it is huge.

Android Market and Apple’s App Store, but I’m writing about Android here, so I’ll focus on the former, which changed everything in October 2008.

Suddenly, apps were a readily available commodity. There was a centralized platform that you could go to and it had a repository of all the apps available for your phone, properly curated and laid out. You just have to browse and download. And it didn’t matter where you lived, because the market quickly expanded to hundreds of countries.

Program diversity started small but quickly grew. There were more choices than a few weather apps and some office tools, and developer adoption was moving up, so more apps were always around the corner! In those early days, I also loved checking user ratings and reviews because I finally had a good enough sample size to judge whether an app was worth trying. And app updates eventually became the norm, so I wasn’t bogged down with buggy or out-of-date software and could see apps right in front of my eyes.

We take this all for granted now, but it was all an amazing innovation in the late 00s. It only took a few years for Android to convince me to leave Nokia and Symbian behind and hand over my digital life to the little green boy. Belief in the future of the platforms was the main reason and the apps were another reason. I wanted access to everything and things were delivered through Android apps.

Over the years, the Android market has changed a lot. Added paid apps and in-app purchases, better security and app scanning through Play Protect, family app and game sharing, improved type-based app permissions, instant apps, Play Pass and many more features. But the goal has always been the same: to get more apps into our hands.

Nowadays, when I open the Play Store on my phone and look for a new app to install, I don’t think twice. Oh, there’s a new ChatGPT app for Android? Bad that it. Oh, I need to get the companion app for my Oura ring? Of course, another Play Store download has disappeared into the background, but this is a testament to its good performance and the quasi-saturation of the app market.

Android Market was launched in October 2008. At the end of 2009, it had only 20,000 apps, but since then the growth has been exponential. Over 100,000 apps by mid-2010, 3.5 million today.

Among the early successes were The Weather Channel and WeatherBug, as weather widgets were not available out of the box. ES File Manager and ASTRO File Manager, because Android didn’t have a built-in file manager. Multiple flashlight apps, as it hasn’t been easily accessible yet. Barcode scanners like Google Lens didn’t exist yet. Advanced Task Killer because Android at that time was poor in resource management. And Titanium Backup because Android had zero backup and recovery capabilities.

Over time, apps emerged that didn’t just fill in the gaps and fix the problems, but also brought more capabilities to our smartphones. Tasker and Locale for automation, Shazam for song authentication, Pandora and Spotify for streaming music, Aldiko for e-book reading, Angry Birds, Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Kindle, Skype, Foursquare, and more popular apps before the end of 2010. Android was launched. .

Android entered the cycle of positive reinforcement. More apps meant more users, so more brands made more Android phones for this new customer, which brought more developers and apps. Angry Birds and Vine walked so Genshin Impact and TikTok could run.

Today, we may be a lot less enthusiastic about apps than we were in the 10-00s. They’re just a part of our lives, but if you’re like me, you’re probably annoyed the moment you realize the service you want to use doesn’t have an Android app.

We know when we’re missing apps because it’s normal to have them. And we owe this drastic change to Android Market and Apple App Store. Long live apps, and may you have the wisdom to know when to use them and when to ditch them and enjoy real life.