360 DEGREES Weblog

After less than three years of existence, Apple’s App Store has accumulated half-a-million mobile apps.

The iTunes App Store, which launched in the summer of 2008, surpassed the 500,000 milestone Tuesday morning, according to 148Apps, an iPhone app reviews blog that has been tracking the store closely.

To be clear, that’s 500,000 apps that Apple has approved — they’re not necessarily live yet. In the United States, the App Store is just shy of reaching 400,000 apps available for download.

“The fact that it has taken less than three years to reach this number is remarkable,” said Jeff Scott, editor of 148Apps. “With the improved tools for developers and steady adoption of smartphone technology, I anticipate there is still a lot of runway.”

Since its birth, Apple’s App Store has expanded rapidly, from 500 apps on day one to 100,000 about one year later. On the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, the App Store is the only official channel for customers to download and purchase third-party software with the tap of a button.

The App Store’s seamless, friction-free purchasing process provided an efficient business model for the software industry. Prior to the App Store, independent software coders had a difficult time competing against larger software companies with big budgets. Many tried marketing and selling their apps with methods such as the shareware model, or on their personal websites, but few found success through these ad-hoc channels.

By tying the App Store to iTunes and including the store on every iPhone, Apple created a captive audience and an effective marketing platform for distributing software, where programmers both big and small had an equal chance to make serious money. A handful of lucky developers struck it rich with hot app sales.

After the App Store exploded, other competitors launched their own app stores. Google’s Android app market, which launched eight months after the App Store, is the closest rival, with about 300,000 apps to date.

To celebrate the App Store’s half-a-million milestone, Scott of 148Apps collaborated with Chomp, a company that makes an app search tool, to create a large infographic (see full graphic below the jump) summarizing statistics about the app landscape.

Some tidbits from the App Store infographic:

It would cost $891,982.24 and over 7 terabytes to download all available applications.
Approximately 36 percent of all apps are free, and paid apps have an average price of $3.64
Angry Birds has held the number 1 paid spot more than any other app at 275 days total.
At one point does quantity no longer matter? Nobody needs 500,000 apps, but I’ve argued in the past that the more apps an app store accrues, the more likely it can fill every need for various professions, hobbies and special interests.

Creating your own films on an iPhone is great fun and fantastically easy to do, but a new app called CollabraCam now enables you to take your filming to a new level using multiple iPhones as extra cameras to record footage and combine them all to create the ultimate production.

The iPhone CollabraCam application allow one iPhone device to become the ‘Director’ device and then wirelessly connect with up to four other iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad cameras as ‘operators’ also running the CollabraCam app over local Wi-Fi.

The footage from all the cameras can then be viewed on the Directors device, enabling the Director to monitor the live-streaming cameras and choose the best shots to edit in real-time.

There are plenty of features within the CollabraCam application and if each camera operator saves their name or Twitter username, CollabraCam can automatically generate a credits page using the entered information. It’s also possible to export the project with all the raw footage, over onto the Director’s device at the end of the shoot.

So if you fancy giving a few Hollywood Directors a run for their money why not try the $6 CollabraCam which is available in the Apple App Store now.

Here’s another interesting “coffee table book” app for iPad for your consideration.  The Man in Space app is a multi-media examination of 50 years of space exploration.  It was based on a special edition of Sky at Night Magazine.  It starts with the events that lead to the “Space Race”, through manned flights and Moon landings, to the various space stations.  You’ll explore history with videos, photo galleries, 360-degree views of the Moon and spacecrafts, and even a foreword by Sir Patrick Moore, the only person to have met Neil Armstrong, Yuri Gagarin, and the Wright brothers.

The Man in Space app is $4.99 in the iTunes store.

Have you ever been visiting a new city, and wondered what cool things happened in the area? If you had a tour guide, they’d be able to tell you every little interesting fact. However, such guides cost money, and you have to walk around according to their schedule. There are also books with information, but you don’t want to be flipping through the pages trying to find your location, instead of enjoying the sites. What you need is an app for your mobile device that can pinpoint your exact location, and provide interesting facts.

This is exactly what It Happened Here was created to do. It pulls up your location and overlays it on Google Maps. It then drops pins with points of interest, and what events transpired at each. At $2.99 (iOS and Android), it makes for a cheap tour guide. You will also need to purchase different cities from within the app, which is a little disappointing. But in the end, it’s still far less expensive than signing up for a group tour.

Seamless from Five Details on Vimeo.

If you have ever been enjoying a tune on your Mac desktop or MacBook, but needed to pop out of for some reason, and would like to continue listening to the track on your iPod or iPhone, while you are mobile. Its always been a chore to jump to the track and position on your mobile or iPod. Until now.

A new app called Seamless now allows you to continue listening to your music from one Apple device to another seamlessly without dropping a beat, by just the press of a button. Watch the video to see how easy the process is.

The ability to direct a live video shoot across multiple cameras in real time has historically been a luxury reserved for professionally equipped directors. However, once again, app-based technology has turned a well-established norm on its head. Offering the same capability to anyone in possession of a smartphone or tablet, we recently came across CollabraCam. To use the app, between two and four iPhones, iPod Touches or iPads can be connected via wifi. The director of the shoot will then be able to view all the cameras’ streams on his or her device, and select which footage should be visible on the main video stream at any one given time. Cameras can also be put on standby in order to prepare them for the next shot, and the director can silently issue instructions such as pan and track movements to camera operators via a display on their screen. All the footage recorded by the camera operators is transferred to the director’s device automatically as the shoot is taking place, removing the need for lengthy memory card exchanges and footage downloads after a shoot has concluded, as well as freeing up space on the operators’ devices. A video demonstrates a prototype of the app in greater detail, and a sample video produced by the final version of the app can be seen here. Produced by US-based Apptopus, Inc, CollabraCam is currently available from the App Store at USD 9.99.

Knowing that it’s only a matter of time before the smartphone completely replaces the notebook for most people, Moleskine’s done the only logical thing it could do: it’s made an app. The Moleskine App (Free) acts like a virtual library of the company’s celebrated notebooks, with your choice of plain, ruled, or squared paper, you can write and edit text notes, sketch, insert and store images, geotag notes, and share your thoughts via email or online.

Classic gamers rejoice — Atari is brining all the 2600 action you can handle with its new iPhone app. Atari’s Greatest Hits (Free-$15) lets you indulge in 100 old school games (18 classic Atari arcade games and 92 Atari 2600 games), including Asteroids, Centipede, Crystal Castles (not the band), and Star Raiders. You also get Bluetooth mutliplayer options, plus original cabinet and box art. Two ways to buy — 25 separate packs available for download at $0.99, or you can get all 100 games for $15.

We’ve seen our fair share of odd iPhone apps, but Meal Snap might just take the cake (pun intended).  You simply snap a photo of your meal, upload it and within minutes you’ll receive a response containing what’s in your meal as well as the calorie count.

Since it’s unlikely that they’ve developed an automated algorithm, chances are they’re depending on a team of people to manually review the picture and look up the information online.  You can label your meals if you so choose, and doing so will probably expedite the process,

You can buy it now for $3, just don’t expect them to count the calories of cat meat.

You know you should have an inventory of all your possessions for insurance purposes in case of fire, theft, or natural disasters.  However, it can be difficult to collect and maintain all the information you need for the inventory.  The GearID app for iPhone/iPod touch/iPad (running iOS 4.0 or later) lets you track product information (model, serial numbers, etc), purchase, warranty, and insurance information; you can even store photos of the gear and the receipts.  If your iOS device has a camera, you can scan barcodes for easier data entry.  The app has many more features and functions, and GearID is free in the iTunes store.