Store set to be apple of master's eye

In 2007 Steve Jobs launched the iPhone with a fanfare of fiery rhetoric. The iPhone, Apple's chief executive claimed, was three "revolutionary" devices in one. Combining a touch-controlled iPod media player, a phone and an "Internet communicator", the iPhone was "a leapfrog product that is way smarter than any mobile device has ever been". In contrast, when Mr Jobs introduced the App store a little less than 18 months ago, his vocabulary was considerably more muted. The digital distribution channel, he said, was a "pretty cool" way for programmers to get their applications into the hands of millions of iPhone users. Yet, more than 2bn downloads later, the app phenomenon that has fueled and fed off the iPhone's success not only appears more significant than that blockbuster product, it might prove to be the most important thing Apple has ever created. Apps for the iPhone and an array of imitators are generating billions of dollars in annual sales even as most of the technology industry slumps. They have proved the key to Apple's disrupting of a fourth industry after computers, music, and phones: the world of video games. And they have created a gold rush mentality in Silicon Valley and elsewhere as coders try to strike it rich with a new gimmick or must-have feature.