Happy first birthday, iPhone Apps store! Yes, it was one year ago today, on July 10, 2008, that it first opened its doors. And it’s been quite a year. Just a few months ago, the one billionth app was downloaded, and things have only gotten better since then. But does all that success translate into more and better apps for you, the consumer?

As this Snapshot of the iPhone Apps Store: One Year Later shows us, it sure as heck does. When the store first opened, it offered 500 or so third-party apps. Today that number has exploded to 56,667 and counting. Yes, that number does include approximately 50 different fart apps. But it includes many, many more that are fun, useful or time-saving. The average price of apps is still extremely low, about $2.57 per, and that average has to take into account a video surveillance application called iRa, which has a hefty pricetag of $899.99. Every day, the store receives 135 new app submissions. And that number is only growing.

Of course, with all those submissions, some sketchy stuff is bound to leak through. Apple just had to remove the app “BeautyMeter” from the store, after it was discovered to contain a user-submitted nude image of an allegedly 15 year old girl. But Apple’s quick action does show that, despite the flood of new applications, some with huge amounts of content, including user-generated content, Apple is still able to keep a pretty tight rein on things.

Tags: app store, eCommerce, iPhone

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