In this article, the author unexpectedly comes across the world’s first app store while researching Brother printers. It was established by Brother Industries in 1986 during Japan’s economic miracle and the boom in the technology industry. Brother’s engineers collaborated with Nippon Telegraph and Telephone to build a videotex network, giving them technical expertise in data transmission. Yuichi Yasutomo, an employee at Brother, had the idea to create a “software vending machine” that sold the contents of floppy disks and wrote them to empty disks. This innovative approach revolutionized software distribution, democratized software, and allowed indie game developers to sell their creations. Despite technical limitations and eventual closure, the success of this app store led to Brother’s pivot into another market worth half a billion dollars.
https://one-from-nippon.ghost.io/worlds-first-app-store/