Has it really been almost a year since the launch of the Apple App Store? On July 11, 2008, the store opened all across the world. In the twelve months since we've seen app downloads exceed one billion and the store's offerings grow to over 56,000 apps. The App Store has succeeded far beyond what I'm sure many people expected, and it has revolutionized the mobile industry.

In order to celebrate one year of apps, Apple is putting up a special page to list some of their favorite apps. These lists vary depending on your location, but you can check out some of the listed U.S titles here

This celebration gets me wondering about what is going to come next for the App Store. Apple's never been content to rest on their laurels, and this recent spate of successes shouldn't change anything. I think the next big shift for the App Store is probably going to come from gaming. The Sims iPhone game has been hugely successful, and I think that Apple knows the future of mobile gaming is going to involve big-name games and manufacturers.

Twelve months from now I think we'll be looking at an App Store with more than a hundred thousand apps. I also think several of the bestselling apps will probably be versions of modern computer games built for the iPhone platform. Exactly what we'll see depends heavily on just how beefy next year's iPhone is, but if the dual-core iPhone rumor turns out to be true we could be in for a serious breakthrough in mobile gaming.