Apple-palooza! Apple Unleashes App Store

The App Store became available this morning when Apple released its 7.7 version of the iTunes software.

"The reaction we have gotten so far has been really strong," Steve Jobs said in an interview with The New York Times. "The quality and the sophistication of the applications you can write for the iPhone is in a different class."

According to Pinch Media, at launch the store had 552 applications -- 417 of them paid, 135 of them free. Paid applications ranged in price from $0.99 to $69.99, with the most common price points being $0.99 (85 applications), $9.99 (82 applications), and $4.99 (62 applications). Of course, this is just the beginning. Piper Jaffrey analyst Gene Munster forecasts that the App Store could be a $1 billion-plus market by 2009.

Munster based his outlook on the assumption that there will be an active App Store user base of 78 million, including iPod touch and iPhone owners by the end of calendar year 2009. With this scenario, he said he assumes that there will be 91 percent active usership for the App Store. Even the high-profile private equity firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers has jumped into the app pool and has set up the iFund, which plans to invest $100 million in new iPhone-related software firms, The New York Times said. Indeed, the future looks bright for developers: the paper said that in just in the last four months the fund received 2,000 financing requests from developers, 85 percent of them intended for consumers.

Sure, Super Monkey Ball is the top app so far, but the store is an opportunity for businesses as well. CRM giant Salesforce.com is represented with its Salesforce Mobile App, which provides a slew of features, such as displays of customers, accounts and leads, and custom applications using the Force.com platform. Developers building apps on the platform can deliver the apps to the iPhone without writing any extra code.

While there are a lot of free apps, some can be fairly pricey, such as the classic tome Netter's Atlas of Human Anatomy flash cards, which will set you back $40. Features include toggle pins with 300 fully annotated illustrations. A great gift for the med student and Grey's Anatomy aficionado in your life.

And after you come home from a hard day at the hospital, how about unwinding with some music? But wait, what the heck was the name of that song that was playing in the doctor's lounge? You can use Shazam, an app that identifies music from the radio, store, TV or film. Just hold your iPhone to the music and Shazam will display the artist and track name. Users can also save their tag history and build their own soundtracks, buy music since the tags cleverly link to iTunes and see related music videos on YouTube. Shazam indeed!