Facebook's Messenger Bot Store could be the most important launch since the App Store

If Facebook announces the "Messenger Bot Store" at F8, as many predict, it would be arguably the most consequential event for the tech industry since Apple announced the App Store and iPhone SDK in March 2008. Even Steve Jobs could not have foreseen the impact of what he described as "a new application that lets users browse, search, purchase and download third party applications directly onto their iPhone". By the time the App Store opened for business in July 2008, approximately 6 million people worldwide owned an iPhone. By the end of the year, the number of iPhone owners had more than doubled, and in each of the following years iPhone sales doubled and then doubled again. The App Store ecosystem – which now has more than 1.5 million iOS apps – heralded the arrival of a new "mobile" era.