The lessons from an infant industry, including the power of cooperation and importance of regulating with a light touch
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Android, apps, iPhones, Angry Birds, iPads, FarmVille, data contracts: It's a bit jarring to realize that these terms, so familiar today, only date back five years. The introduction of the iPhone in 2007, and the initial distribution of Android the same year, marked the birth of the App Economy.
But the App Economy didn't just mean more fun games and more ways to do work on the go -- it meant more jobs as well. Based on research I did for Technet, the association of high-tech innovative companies, the App Economy has generated nearly 500,000 jobs since 2007. This is an impressive total, especially during the worst labor market downturn since the Great Depression. It's also an indication of the growing macroeconomic impact of the App Economy.
We can draw three lessons from the success of the App economy to help us understand how we can drive prosperity forward.
Innovation creates jobs. Nobody conceived of the idea of 'apps' before the iPhone was introduce in 2007, followed by the opening of the Apple App store in July 2008. But suddenly it turned out that there was a pent-up demand for light-weight applications to run on mobile devices and platforms, and a pent-up supply of programmers to create these light-weight applications.