App Store Success Blows Away Apple Expectations

Apple, it would seem, never expected the enormous success of the App Store, according to a venture capitalist in the iPhone app business. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Matt Murphy told London's The Financial Times that expectations within Apple were much, much lower before the App Store was launched.

"We had no idea there would be two billion downloads by October," Mr. Murphy told The FT. "Most people within Apple, if you had told them it would be a fifth of that by now, they would have been pretty happy."

Mr. Murphy may well be in a position to know such things in that he manages a US$100 million fund -- the iFund -- dedicated to iPhone app development, the first such fund to be created.

His comments come as part of a three part series The FT is running on Apple, the iPhone, and its App Store. Part 1 of the series is mostly a retrospective, for those interested in recapping the past couple of years of iPhone app development.