> The first mobile app was released as a series of 500 “native” applications in Apple’s App Store. This came with the first iPhone, which was released in June 2007.

Hello Symbian!

A UK company, Symbian, which was a world leader in mobile OS was already supporting native mobile app development long before Apple and Google provided that; and they were also fanatic about memory usage, battery life and security. And not only that, it provided ways for various handset manufacturers to build custom UI unlike Android. Japanese mobile phone companies use to have some of the most amazing UIs because of that.