Key figures: Steve Jobs (Apple CEO), Scott Forstall (SVP, iOS Software), Phil Schiller (SVP, Worldwide Marketing), Apple developer relations team
Summary
Apple released iOS 4 on June 21, 2010, three days ahead of the iPhone 4, having previewed it at the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on June 7, 2010. The release was notable first for its name: iOS 4 was the first version branded “iOS” rather than “iPhone OS,” a change that reflected the software’s expansion beyond the phone to the iPod touch and the newly launched iPad. The rename signaled Apple’s intent to treat iOS as a single platform spanning multiple device classes—a strategy that would define the company’s product architecture for the decade.
Where the iPhone 4 article covers the handset’s hardware, this entry treats iOS 4 as a software platform and application ecosystem. Across its initial release and two major point updates—iOS 4.1 (September 8, 2010) and iOS 4.2 (November 22, 2010)—iOS 4 introduced the frameworks that turned the iPhone from a device with apps into the anchor of a self-sustaining app economy. By the end of 2010, Apple’s App Store had grown to roughly 300,000 applications and had served billions of downloads, and the phrase “there’s an app for that”—which Apple registered as a trademark in 2010—had entered common usage.
Platform Features
The initial iOS 4 release delivered several capabilities that reshaped how the platform was used and developed for:
- Multitasking: Third-party apps gained a limited set of background execution modes for audio playback, voice-over-IP, and location updates, plus a fast app-switching model. Full background execution remained reserved for Apple’s own apps, but the APIs let developers keep music, navigation, and calls alive across app switches for the first time.
- App folders: Users could group apps into named folders, raising the practical home-screen capacity from 180 to 2,160 apps—an acknowledgment that the App Store had grown large enough that flat home screens no longer scaled.
- Unified inbox and multiple Exchange accounts: Mail consolidated messages from several accounts into a single view and supported more than one Microsoft Exchange account, broadening enterprise appeal.
- iBooks on iPhone: Apple’s e-reader, introduced with the iPad, came to the phone.
- Spell-check and home-screen wallpaper (the latter on iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 only).
iOS 4 dropped support for the original iPhone and the first-generation iPod touch, and ran in a deliberately reduced form on the iPhone 3G, where the new features strained the older hardware.
Point Releases: Game Center, AirPlay, and AirPrint
Two point releases in the second half of 2010 extended the platform substantially:
iOS 4.1 (September 8, 2010) introduced Game Center, Apple’s online multiplayer social-gaming network. First previewed at an iOS 4 event on April 8, 2010, Game Center provided friend invitations, matchmaking, leaderboards, and achievements as system-level services any developer could adopt. It gave the App Store’s largest and most lucrative category—games—a shared social layer comparable to the Xbox Live integration Microsoft was simultaneously building into Windows Phone 7. Game Center was unavailable on the aging iPhone 3G.
iOS 4.2 (November 22, 2010) unified the iPhone and iPad on a common software version for the first time and added AirPlay (wireless streaming of audio and video to the Apple TV), AirPrint (driverless wireless printing, initially to HP printers), and Find My iPhone, which Apple made free for the general public.
The App Store Economy in 2010
iOS 4 launched into an application marketplace that was, by 2010, expanding at a pace with no precedent in software distribution. The App Store had opened in July 2008 with roughly 500 apps; by June 2010 Apple reported more than 225,000 apps (about 11,000 of them iPad-specific) and over 5 billion cumulative downloads. On August 30, 2010, the store passed 250,000 apps for sale, and it closed the year with approximately 300,000 apps and around 7 billion downloads.
The economic model—Apple’s 70/30 revenue split with developers, a single global storefront, and frictionless one-tap purchasing tied to a stored credit card—channeled a wave of small developers and studios into full-time businesses. 2010 was the year “app developer” became a viable independent profession and the year venture capital began treating mobile apps as a distinct category. The Instagram launch in October 2010 and the parallel rise of mobile games exemplified how quickly a single app could reach global scale through the store. Analysts of the period described a “great mobile app store boom,” with iOS setting the template that Google’s Android Market and, later, Windows Phone 7’s Marketplace sought to replicate.
Significance
iOS 4 was the release in which Apple’s mobile software matured from a single-device operating system into a multi-device platform with a durable application economy. The rename to “iOS,” the introduction of managed multitasking, and the system-level Game Center, AirPlay, and AirPrint services established patterns that persisted across the following decade. More consequentially, iOS 4 arrived at the inflection point where the App Store’s scale—a quarter-million apps and billions of downloads within two years of opening—demonstrated that curated, centrally distributed mobile software could sustain an entire industry. The developer economics Apple codified in 2010 shaped the business models, and the regulatory scrutiny, of mobile platforms for years afterward.
See also: iPhone 4 Launch · iPad Launch · Android 2.2 Froyo · Windows Phone 7 Launch · Instagram Launch