Steve Jobs: App Store will launch with 500 iPhone applications

The new App Store for iPhone users is now open and Steve Jobs is very excited about its launch. He said there will is more than 500 applications available. A quarter of them will be offered free.

The App Store is available via iTunes now so users can buy applications and sync it with their old iPhone as well as the new iPhone 3G that will be launched tomorrow. Steve Jobs has introduced so many new products during the last few decades but he says this App Store is the biggest launch of his career. Jobs told USA Today that were will be more than 500 applications by Thursday night just in time for the new iPhone 3G buyers tomorrow. He said nearly 25 per cent of them are available free and the remaining are sold from $0.99 to $9.99 per application. Analyst Tim Bajarin at Creative Strategies expects that iPhone sales will skyrocket after the introduction of this new App Store. He told New York Times:

When IBM introduced the PC, it was good, but it didn't take off until people started discovering the software.

Bajarin added the App Store will dramatically differentiate the iPhones from Treo and BlackBerry phones. I checked the iTunes store, and it has a remarkable initial collection. The downloads work seamlessly just like regular music and movie downloads. You can check photos in your Smugmug or Photobucket account, check your bank account with a Bank of America application, browse the social network Facebook, play crossword puzzle and Mah Jong games, use PayPal to receive or send money from the iPhone and read books on the phone, too. The sky (or is it Skype?) is the limit for iPhones and Apple.