Biography | Steve Jobs — He Opened a Store for Other People's Software in This Hall

On 9 June 2008 Steve Jobs opened WWDC in Moscone West with a store that would sell other companies' software on the iPhone.

The original iPhone, announced in this building sixteen months earlier, had shipped with no third-party apps.

Developers wrote web pages that looked like programs.

This morning Apple said that would end.

The App Store would sit inside iTunes.

A developer would keep 70 percent of the price.

Apple would keep 30.

Free apps would stay free.

The same keynote introduced the iPhone 3G: plastic back, GPS, 3G radio, a flush headphone jack.

The 8 GB model would sell for $199 on contract.

The 16 GB model for $299.

Ship date was 11 July 2008, in 22 countries on the first day, with a target of 70 later.

Jobs said Apple had already sold 6 million of the first iPhone.

iPhone 2.0 software, MobileMe, and Exchange support shared the stage.

The store itself opened on 11 July with about 500 applications.

A quarter of them were free.

Most of the rest cost $9.99 or less.

By 9 September Apple said downloads had passed 100 million and the catalogue had grown past 3,000 titles.

Moscone West at 800 Howard Street is also the hall of the iPhone in 2007, the iTunes Music Store in 2003, and Jobs's last WWDC in 2011.

It still stands.

The store announced here now lists millions of titles and is no longer only a music company's side door.

Cover: Moscone West dressed for WWDC in June 2011.

The banner year is later; the glass box is the one Jobs used in 2008.

Photo: Anton Zelenov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.