"App stores" were run by telcos back then. Usually a storefront selling J2ME apps via WAP and charging money to your phone bill. To be fair the most popular content was ringtones (of the MIDI type).

I think the BREW ecosystem had some solution to set up a store of this kind that they used to supply to carriers?

I have to give credit to Apple for taking power away from the telcos. They wanted to nickel and dime you for every app and feature. Getting even a dumb feature phone out the door required months of certification and the OS might get an update once in the device lifetime if at all.

Sometimes it takes an 800 lb gorilla (with fresh iPod $$$$$) to take on the other 800 lb gorillas, even if it mostly meant we spent the first 8 years or so paying ridiculous 2-year contracts for "subsidized" $700 phones.

>OS might get an update once in the device lifetime if at all.

And some how the lifetime of those phones were much longer than the iPhones, until they had to stop forcing updates which degraded performance.

Apple's updates often improve performance, and very rarely degrade it.

I can only speak for Japan, but all three major carriers here had app stores years before the iPhone launched.

(Apple's may have been the first store operated by a hardware maker rather than a carrier though.)

Yes, carriers had app stores, that were not generally open to anyone, and that took a much bigger cut than Apple.

> that were not generally open to anyone

Apple's store isn't open to anyone.

> and that took a much bigger cut than Apple.

AFAIK Docomo (largest carrier in Japan) took 9%. Are you sure you know what you're talking about here?

I don't see a reasonable definition by which the Apple app store is not open to anyone to publish in.

It's open to anyone Apple certifies, and not to anyone else. How is that different from Docomo's model 5-6 years earlier?

This is just wrong. Nokia had the Ovi store launched at around the same time as Apple’s App Store. Palm OS also had its own if I remember correctly.

"Around the same time" means it wasn't around before, no?

Sure there were in Europe.

I had plenty of J2ME and Symbian apps before iOS was even born.

You didn't get them from an app store open to the public like the Apple one, though, and neither did their developer get to keep a full 70% of the price.

How come it wasn't open to the public?

Send SMS, get download link, done.

Use the Web store from the phone provider, done.

Open for publishing, not buying.

Easy, one just had to have a business and apply to it.

They even had contests for apps. I did apply to one at Vodafone when the Sharp GX20 was released, to show off the device capabilities.

https://www.gamedev.net/forums/topic/166989-vodafone-javatm-...

> Vodafone is pleased to annouce the Vodafone Java(tm) Games Challenge 2003 - a competition for J2ME games developers. The top three winners will receive: - A Sharp-GX20 - The new Vodafone live! handset with QVGA screen resolution - A commercial contract with Vodafone to deploy the winning games onto Vodafone live! in several countries Vodafone live! currently attracts 1.5 million customers across 13 countries. Register at www.via.vodafone.com and submit your games by August, 1st !

And while they had lots of trash, the gatekeeping kept it lower than current store offerings full of copy-cats.

Apple's App Store didn't really have competition. The iPhone was pretty much an entirely new class of smartphone. The sheer volume of users compared to early smartphones meant you could sell an app for $1.99 and make loads of money, compared to Palm/WinMo apps that were more like $10+.

It took off because it was a good experience (one stop shopping) and because of the popularity of the iPhone. And of course it doesn't hurt that it was the only App Store for iOS.

In Europe your phone providers were also one stop shopping.