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iPhone SDK downloads surpass 100,000

By | March 12, 2008, 9:22am PDT

Summary: Apple today announced that more than 100,000 developers have downloaded the beta version of the company’s iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) in the first four days since its launch on 06 March 2008. “Developer reaction to the iPhone SDK has been incredible with more than 100,000 downloads in the first four days,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s [...]

iPhone SDK downloads surpass 100,000Apple today announced that more than 100,000 developers have downloaded the beta version of the company’s iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) in the first four days since its launch on 06 March 2008.

“Developer reaction to the iPhone SDK has been incredible with more than 100,000 downloads in the first four days,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Also, over one million people have watched the launch video on Apple.com, further demonstrating the incredible interest developers have in creating applications for the iPhone.”

It’s pretty obvious that the iPhone SDK is a really big deal, right?

Could Apple have been planning an SDK all along? Or were they coerced into doing it by the crafty cottage industry of jailbreakers that’s grown around iPhone? Or in an attempt to goose waning sales after the inevitable plateau? Anyone seen the AAPL stock price lately? Conspiracy?

Other SDK items of note: Apple’s iPhone Human Interface Guidelines, Rogue Amoeba’s SDK bug report, third-party iPhone apps won’t run in the background and Apple’s taking a 30 percent cut of sales. (Jon Gruber has been covering SDK like a madman.)

For more on the SDK launch event where AOL, Electronic Arts, Epocrates, Salesforce.com and Sega have demonstrated their wares read David Morgenstern’s Reporter’s Notebook.

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Topics

Apple iPhone, SDK, Apple Inc., Jason D. O\'Grady

Jason O'Grady is a journalist and author specializing in mobile technology. He has published six books on Apple and mobile gadgets and his PowerPage blog has been publishing for over 15 years.

Disclosure

Jason D. O'Grady

Jason D. O'Grady is the creator and editor of O'Grady's PowerPage, which has been publishing mobile technology news since 1995. He maintains an advertising relationship with the following legacy advertisers on the PowerPage:

  • Amazon Associates
  • Google Adsense
  • Tekserve

    • Advertising on the PowerPage is brokered by a third-party agency (BackBeat Media) and he recuses himself from these negotiations.

Biography

Jason D. O'Grady

Jason D. O'Grady developed an affinity for Apple computers after using the original Lisa, and this affinity turned into a bona-fide obsession when he got the original 128 KB Macintosh in 1984.

He started writing one of the first Web sites about Apple (O'Grady's PowerPage) in 1995 and is considered to be one of the fathers of blogging. He has been a frequent speaker at the Macworld Expo conference and a member of the conference faculty. He also co-founded the first dedicated PowerBook User Group (PPUG) in the United States.

After winning a major legal battle with Apple in 2006, he set the precedent that independent journalists are entitled to the same protections under the First Amendment as members of the mainstream media.

O'Grady is the author of The Nexus One Pocket Guide, The Droid Pocket Guide, The Google Phone Pocket Guide, and The Garmin nuvi Pocket Guide (Peachpit Press), the author of Corporations That Changed the World: Apple Inc. (Greenwood Press), and a contributor to The Mac Bible (Peachpit Press). In addition, he has contributed to numerous Mac publications over the years, including MacWEEK, Macworld, and MacPower (Japan).

When he's not writing about Apple for ZDNet at The Apple Core, he enjoys spending time with his family in New Jersey.

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RE: iPhone SDK downloads surpass 100,000
tomlin21-24319035676893835085146735905770 11th Oct
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0 Votes
+ -
Guess no on is interested in the SDK.
Bruizer 12th Mar 2008
I mean with all the "serious" issues with it, such-as no 3rd
party multi-tasking, not a single developer would ever be
inclined to use it.

Did you say 100,000 people are idiots;-)

Personally, I was impressed with the speed I could write some
very basic, and functional, applications with the SDK. Once
we get IB fully going... Ahhhh.
0 Votes
+ -
RE: iPhone SDK downloads surpass 100,000
kdarling 12th Mar 2008
Check the iPhone forums. A huge number of those downloads were by confused users thinking it was an update that would give them apps.

Apple should instead announce how many paid $99 to actually join the developer program.

As for any number of downloads, they pale in comparison to the 750,000 Android SDK downloads... for devices that don't even exist yet.
0 Votes
+ -
A huge number???
Bruizer 12th Mar 2008
What 1,000? 100? 75,000? or.... are there some posts like
this on a few forums (I have not noticed any.) so you call
that a huge number?

It is like saying, I read a huge number of developers
downloaded Android SDK and could not figure out how to
make it call out on my phone.
0 Votes
+ -
Well how long as the Android SDK been available?
James Quinn 13th Mar 2008
The iPhone one hasn't been out that long has it?

Pagan jim
0 Votes
+ -
RE: iPhone SDK downloads surpass 100,000
bob@... 13th Mar 2008
Don't forget, Apple is a software company that makes hardware, not the other way around. And software companies thrive on developer communities. There was never any question that they would release the SDK, they simply needed to rush the product out to get mindshare before some of the alternatives, such as Android, took too much of the press away. And frankly it made sense to build the product buzz before giving it to developers -- who wants to develop for an unknown product?

And having spent a few days with the SDK, there is not question that it has been under development for quite some time -- its development probably went hand in hand with product development, though the two probably had separate trajectories as the APIs solidified.
0 Votes
+ -
Of course it has always been planned.
renstein 13th Mar 2008
Apple has had this SDK for years now. I
am willing to bet it was one of the first
things built after/while the OS was
produced. Apple had to build the
software for the iPhone somehow and
this SDK is it. Whether or not, or when
to release it to the developer community
was always the question. The SDK has
existed as long as Apple has been
producing iPhone software.
0 Votes
+ -
RE: iPhone SDK downloads surpass 100,000
tomlin21-24319035676893835085146735905770 11th Oct
Many thanks for submitting this reebok jersey data. I just want to permit you know that I just check out your webpage and I learn it greatly interesting and instructive.

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