Over 100,000 Apps Now Available on the iPhone App Store

[Ed Hardy]

Apple has just announced that developers have created over 100,000 apps for the App Store, the official source for iPhone and iPod touch software

At this point, customers in 77 countries have downloaded well over two billion apps, continuing to make it the world’s most popular software store.

“The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve,” said Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile.

A Brief History of the iPhone App Store
When the original iPhone was announced in early 2007, Apple said it would not allow other companies to release native software for this smartphone. Instead, they could only make Web apps that ran in the browser.

For the entire first year this device was on the market, native third-party applications were blocked. This lead to a significant percentage of devices being "jail-broken" -- modified to remove this restriction.

Only tremendous demand from users forced Apple to change course, and the App Store debuted with the launch of the second-generation iPhone.

Lots of Competition
When Apple launched its software store, the idea of an on-device application store was hardly a new one -- companies like Handango have offered them for years --but the early ones met with limited success.  The popularity of the iPhone version has breathed new life into this concept, and virtually all of Apple's competitors are seeking to imitate this accomplishment.

Both Google's Android OS and Palm's webOS debuted with a software store part of their basic feature set, RIM has launched the BlackBerry App World, while Nokia has the Ovi Store. In addition, Microsoft introduced an application store for Windows Mobile devices last month.

Still, none of these have been able to match the App Store. In second place is the Android Market, which has around 12,000 apps.

Source: Apple

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[harpgliss]

Hi,

Isn't this a hoot?

Lots of good stuff there but lots of junk apps too.

Gotta be careful and do lots of searching to be sure of an app before buying.

Also lots of impulse price apps for those looking for a quick fix.

David

[midtoad]

that's a hugely inflated number, I suspect. Not that there aren't actually 100,000 items in the store, but really, how many of them are actually distinct apps?

Today's "Apps on sale" RSS feed lists over 100 apps all called "Supa Fan" followed by the name of some celebrity. So if you wanted to be informed about 100 celebritites, you'd have to install 100 of these "apps".

then too, there are a gazillion book apps, where the "app" is simply a wrapper for an open-source book.

And also, even when we get down to discrete apps by different developers, you have the phenomenon of, say, 400 fart apps.

I wonder what the real number of apps is.... 10,000? 20,000?

[DragonHunter]

I agree. There may be that many 'entries' but when you lump all the excruciatingly similar apps, the number shrinks exponentially.

Neverthess, for such a closed system, there is a fair bit of variety.

[Varjak]

I remember when it was actually feasible to 'page' through the entire catalog in less than an hour or so.

[palmgeek5394]

My little brother has an iPod Touch, and I've seen multiple pages of apps that are almost the same thing, with very few differences between them. 100,000 isn't very impressive when you have, for example, 200+ fart apps, over a hundred drum apps, and dozens of almost every kind of app.
There are, however, tons of really cool apps, but it's seriously limiting since it's completely against the rules to run background processes, change much of anything (remember GV?), or do anything else on a list of stuff. If there are too many limitations, it's like having a Ferrari that's limited to 55mph...

[Drillbit]

Its useless criticizing the "uselessness" of many iPhone apps.

Because even with the useful ones, they still far outnumber all the other mobile app libraries, who also have their share of useless and duplicate apps.

The thing about app duplication in the iPHone app market is that it forces developers to compete, and try to distinguish themselves in quality and features. The result of this competition is that iPhone apps are generally better in quality, has more feature set, and yet costs less than the equivalent in other mobile OS app catalogs.

Right now, just by comparing Facebook alone. The Facebook app for the iPhone is the best out there, though none of the Blackberry notification features, though an update is coming. In every mobile OS platform, the Facebook app is often among the most downloaded and used app out there. After that its the Blackberry Facebook app, then the Symbian for touchscreen Facebook app, then Android, then Windows Mobile, which gets the lousiest FB mobile app despite it was Microsoft who actually made it. Palm WebOS and Symbian V3 don't get any at all.

Let's take Yahoo Messenger. Again, the iPhone gets the best app, followed by Blackberry. The rest rely on Java apps or third party apps like Palringo or fring.

Twitter apps. While I use Gravity in my Nokia phones, I have to say Tweetie and Twitterific for the iPhone that rules the roost. The iPhone has the most Twitter apps out there and the general quality is quite high. Furthermore, they're available either free or at a lower cost than those in other platforms.

Then you have the free branded apps with location services and online ordering. The Pizza Hut app. The Starbucks app. Pizza Hut claims their iPhone app help gather more than a million additional sales.

Also have some truly fantastic news apps that I use. Bloomberg app happens also in Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Mobille, yet its the iPhone version is clearly the best I've used. Then there are CNN, MSNBC, CBS, Discovery Channel, Wall Street Journal and others.

Reality bites. Among the 100k apps, there are loads of gems out there with the fart apps. Great gaming apps too like BeJewelled. I would say that about 1/5th of the App Store are mobile games, and they're constituting a serious threat to Nintendo and Sony PSP, both of whom already acknowledged the iPhone-iPod Touch threat to their DS and PSP platforms.

[Varjak]

Drillbit, until Sony makes Gran Turismo available on the iPhone, I don't see a threat to the PSP (joking).

[Magellan]

If you want to complain about too many apps in the app catalog, there is an app for that. :-)

[Drillbit]

Didn't Apple actually reject MacWorld's iPhone app for that? Reason given is that you cannot use or include "iPhone" as the app title or name.