Before the release of the iPhone in 2007, there was no app economy to speak of. In 2008 there were fewer than 100,000 iOS apps available; this had rocketed up to around 4.5 million by 2017.[126] On Android, the growth was just as dramatic. In December 2009, there were around 16,000 mobile apps available in the Google Play Store.[127] As of March 2023, there were 2.6 million.[128] That is a more than 160-fold increase in thirteen years.
