A Short History of Mobile Apps: From Snake to App Stores

In 1997 a phone game called Snake came pre-installed on Nokia handsets and millions of people played it on a tiny green screen. Today, people in India pay for their tea with an app, and a phone can do the job of a bank, a camera, a map and a shop. This guide tells the story of mobile apps, shows what an app really is under the hood, and helps you decide how to build one, with a tool that recommends an approach based on your answers.

What is an app, really

An app is a program built for a phone or tablet. Most apps have the same three parts. The screen, called the front end, is what you see and tap. The logic decides what happens when you tap, such as checking a form. And a server, called the back end, stores data and does work that should not run on your phone, such as checking your account balance. The app and the server talk over the internet using a standard format, usually JSON.

A short history of mobile apps

The store was the real invention. Before 2008, installing software on a phone was awkward and each maker had its own system. A single trusted store let any developer reach millions of buyers, and gave rise to a new industry. By 2024 the Apple store alone listed around two million apps.

Four ways to build an app

Here is the same tiny counter in four of these styles, so you can see how different they look. Each draws a button that counts clicks.

// Kotlin (Android, Jetpack Compose)
@Composable
fun Counter() {
    var count by remember { mutableStateOf(0) }
    Button(onClick = { count++ }) { Text("Clicked $count times") }
}

// Swift (iPhone, SwiftUI)
struct CounterView: View {
    @State private var count = 0
    var body: some View {
        Button("Clicked \(count) times") { count += 1 }
    }
}

// JavaScript (React Native)
export default function Counter() {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);
  return <Button title={`Clicked ${count} times`} onPress={() => setCount(count + 1)} />;
}

// Dart (Flutter)
class _CounterState extends State<Counter> {
  int count = 0;
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) => ElevatedButton(
        onPressed: () => setState(() => count++),
        child: Text('Clicked $count times'),
      );
}

A Progressive Web App needs only a web page plus a small file called a manifest that tells the phone how to install it:

{
  "name": "My Shop",
  "short_name": "Shop",
  "start_url": "/",
  "display": "standalone",
  "background_color": "#ffffff",
  "icons": [{ "src": "/icon-512.png", "sizes": "512x512", "type": "image/png" }]
}

Try it: which approach should you choose

Answer five questions. The tool scores the four approaches and recommends one. It is a rule of thumb for planning, not a substitute for talking to a developer.

Getting an app into the stores

1. Create a developer account. Apple charges an annual fee and Google charges a one-time fee at the time of writing, so check the current prices.
2. Prepare an app icon, screenshots, a description and a privacy policy. Both stores require a privacy policy for apps that collect data.
3. Build a signed release version of the app.
4. Upload it, fill in the store listing and submit for review. Apple reviews every app by hand, and Google uses a mix of automated and manual checks.
5. After approval, monitor crash reports and reviews, and release updates regularly.

India: the phone as a bank

India’s biggest app story is UPI. The Unified Payments Interface was launched in a pilot on 11 April 2016 with 21 banks, and is run by the National Payments Corporation of India under Reserve Bank of India rules. It lets any UPI-enabled app on any phone send money from one bank account to another in seconds, using a simple handle instead of long account numbers. By August 2025 UPI handled about 20 billion transactions in a single month, which makes it one of the largest real-time payment systems in the world.

Cheap smartphones and cheap data helped. Millions of Indian users came online for the first time through a phone, so many Indian apps are designed to be light, to work on slow networks and to support regional languages. If you are building for India, test on a low-cost Android phone, not only on the latest model.

Mind map: mobile apps

Test yourself

Frequently asked questions

Where to go next

Sources

• App Store (Apple), Wikipedia, launch date, launch numbers and store size
• Unified Payments Interface, Wikipedia, UPI launch and volume figures
• Progressive web apps, MDN Web Docs, how PWAs work

Facts were cross-checked and rewritten in our own words. Code samples are short original examples and were not compiled for this article.