Yesterday’s release of Apple’s iPhone 7.7 version was received with great enthusiasm by many of the company’s fans and more. The 7.6 version introduced the new rental feature amongst the company’s services, so the update had to top its past efforts. It did just that, by offering support for the new iPhone 3G and also most notably, opening the Apple App Store.

The Apple App Store offers hundreds of third-party applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch users. Steve Jobs talked to the New York Times about the store’s offer, saying that from day one, it will feature more than 500 software applications, ranging from games and educational programs to mobile commerce and business productivity tools.

The company decided on investing in the project in order to boost its iPhone sales and not looking to make a profit from selling the applications. In order to attract developers to participate in enriching the apps library, Apple set a rule which entitles the designers to 70 percent of their apps’ sales price.

Steve Jobs announced that a quarter of the first set of 500 apps will be free of charge and 90 percent of the remaining ones will cost $9.99 or less, which is sure to attract a massive clientele over the next few days, not to mention in the long run. So far, there are 85 applications available for $0.99, 82 applications sold for $9.99 each and 62 other for $4.99.

Jott Networks is one of Apple’s partners who recently announced that its iPhone application is available as a free download on the company’s App Store and will provide an extremely useful productivity tool in the form of a notepad with voice-input and the new Multi-Touch technology.

An Internet radio company called Pandora, known for offering a personalized Web music service, also registered an application for the iPhone 3G which will allow its users to access their favorite songs through the Internet whenever they feel like it. The company already released a similar program under a monthly fee with carriers AT&T and Sprint, but the popularity of the free Apple service is expected to go through the roof, as the company’s executives are confident in the uniquely of their offer.

"This is going to open the floodgates," said Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, as quoted by SFGate. He also added: "It is going to redefine the category of the Internet radio, which is huge for us because we have been playing in a pretty small sandbox."

The App Store plans to offer a new perspective on using an iPhone, allowing the discovery of new ways to entertain yourself with music, games and videos and will surely reach its target of significantly increasing the smartphone’s global sales.

Unfortunately, at this point, out of the 554 applications, 214 are tagged as related to entertainment but only 20 deal with video and music. Many of the other entertainment tags refer to games and books, and new add-ons from the big music labels and TV networks would surely be greatly appreciated.