[Update: The App Store has returned. Back to your regularly scheduled Fridays.]
Midday on Friday it appeared that Apple’s App Store, a critical piece of the digital and mobile economies, struggled with uptime issues. Apple’s own status page indicated that the application vendor was having an “ongoing” issue that affected “some users.”
The company said that it was investigating the issue, according to its website.
Users weren’t pleased. A quick Twitter search shows a host of complaints from users noting that they can’t make purchases on the App Store, were struggling with sign-on issues and that downloads had ground to a halt.
Despite launching after the original iPhone, the App Store has become an industry to itself. According to certain data, the App Store drove $50 billion gross sales in 2019 — Apple takes a cut of transactions and sales, generating material revenue for itself.
The App Store will come back, but Apple is losing money along with its developer partners as we speak. More when it’s back. Until then, well, there’s Android or a walk.
