The iPhone's first 100,000 apps

AppExplorer thinks there are currently 99,303 apps available in the (U.S.) App Store:

http://appexplorer.com/?q=

Far more have been “released” but over 10,000 are no longer available.

You can see more stats if you click the App Stats link on the site.

I think storm8 shutting down in bogus!, do they have any idea how many people play this game!?, I would be devastated! And I know of many orhers who would be also! Do we not give out our phone numbers when we register for things on the computer?!, or when we play games on the computer and give them our phone number for the game or tests results?!…

Listen, I am a proud owner of iPhone and I'm a hard to please consumer. You don't need to tell me iPhone is ahead of its competion. Sorry, but your pretty bars were just bars. Please tell me something I don't already know or see or hear.

By the way, I love the article on Steve Jobs and completely agree with the writer's insightful and analytical summary of the guy. If you wrote it, my hats off to you, and I'll take back everything I said! That's what I expect from Fortune writers! Insightful, and in the forefront. If we can get the rest of the American bred CEOs to have Jobs' brain and vision, our economy won't be in this shape – starting with the auto industry! We have way too many arrogant, greedy and self-praising execs who can't see their own limitations!

ex ped: Adam Lashinsky wrote the Steve Jobs' CEO of the Decade article.

98,000 apps are completely ignored by iPhone users according to recent studies. That means about 2,000 are actually useful, downloaded, and installed. Apple's app count figures are truly misleading.

More than 50% of these so called apps aren't really apps; they're nothing more than easy-to-build web pages built using HTML/Javascript/CSS! The real apps contain native programing code that are required to be compiled.

Generally, web pages on the Internet are not regarded as apps. Otherwise, we would already declare the Interget hosting billions of apps.

iPhone breaks the record for having the highest number of ignored apps!

More useful stats would be:
. average downloads per app
. average sales revenue per app (for non-free apps)

Had Mr. Dim Wit started drinking the Kool-Aid?

Or did he smell the coffee and realize he could get more hits from talking up Apple vs. a dying company like Microsoft?

Very soon, Jobs willing, there will be more Apps than competitors phones put together.

Now seriously, what are "Apps"? these are programmes for a computer, in this case, Apple's iPhone. But technology enables handhelds computers be virutally similar to desktops or laptops with the only difference being the size of the monitor. This issue will too, be resolved and then, 100,000 of Apple's blessed "Apps" will have to be compared to well, millions of programmes for the dreaded Microsoft or Linux PCs. Yepp.

From Pogues NYT times column:

For lots of people, these breakthroughs will be irresistible. But the Droid has its weak spots, and some of them are heartbreaking. The big one is polish and simplicity; the Droid just doesn’t have enough. Techies may go nuts over its flexibility, but normal people are in for some floundering. Sometimes the keyboard doesn’t light up when it should. Sometimes the screen image doesn’t rotate when it should.

The camera has an LED flash, which helps at close range at night, but the camera itself is balky and slow to focus and fire. You can record videos (at a high 720 by 480 resolution, although they don’t look any sharper) and upload them to YouTube, but you can’t trim the dead air off the ends first.

The Droid doesn’t work outside the United States, as the iPhone does (for an added fee). There’s no iTunes-like auto-synching software for the Droid, either, so loading music, photos and videos is a drag-and-drop operation.

The Droid’s Web browser is good, but slower than the iPhone’s. And you have to zoom in and out by tapping +/- buttons or double-tapping the screen. That is, you can’t control how much to zoom, so you get far less control (and pleasure) than “pinching and spreading” with two fingers on the iPhone and Palm Pre. Ditto with maps and photos.

The real bummer, though, is the apps. The Android Market may offer 12,000 of them, but the iPhone store has 100,000 — and over all, they seem to be more useful and imaginative.

Shopping is more awkward on the Droid, too, because you have to do it all on the phone; you can’t use your computer, as you can for the iPhone. There’s not much room for the apps on the Droid, either. Although Verizon includes a 16-gigabyte memory card for your music and photos, apps have to be stored in a 560-megabyte chunk of built-in memory. Some Droiders will fill that up quick.

Droid-versus-iPhone deciders should also take into account the iPhone economy: that universe of docks, cases, chargers, Web sites and information that surround Apple’s hype monster.

I think it's pretty arrogant for people to dismiss a random X number of apps as "useless," who are you to judge? What's next? Too many books? Too many websites? I may not want 500 weather apps but I appreciate that there are 500 weather apps and frankly, I look forward to a million apps to choose from. Are some crap? sure. But who are you to deny free choice OR the fact that developer/ programmers have to start somewhere and in fact, crap actually can goad someone in creating something BETTER … I still have not found a do-list app that syncs and is useful but bravo to the 200 out there that serve other needs & other users … I don't presume things are crap because I don't use them OR that there will NEVER be a better one … AND the best will rise to the top through marketing or WOM – it's NOt a free ride unless you somehow presume that the first weather app means the rest of society and the world should call it a day?

The numbers are impressive, no doubt. There are many duplications, no doubt. I can't grasp why anyone gets worked up over either fact. What matters to me is if I need something is it there?

We went to Zion NP. There was an app for that. Bought it. We went to Sequoia/Kings Canyon. There was an app for that. Bought it. I needed to learn some Korean. There was an app for that. Bought it. I had some time to kill while traveling and wanted a racing game. There was an app for that. Bought it. I was at my mom's and she needed some minor handyman tasks done, but I had no level, protractor, etc. There was an app for that. Bought it.

Now that's an ecosystem that can supply my needs! Get it?

My personal belief at this point is that the 100K App milestone is the point when Apple should switch tactics and focus on something more meaningful than mere quantity, as subsequent numbers become less and less impactful, and we get it, "There's an App for That."

Otherwise, the 'magic' starts to become clinical and cold, which is very un-Apple-like, something that I blogged about in:

iPhone’s 100K Apps milestone is the New '7-Minute Abs'
http://bit.ly/rJkEC

Check it out, if interested.

Mark

I still love to hear from the people who say that 99.9% of the apps are useless. I'm still doubtful about how many people have actually downloaded over 90,000 apps to prove the statement. Word of mouth with other users, maybe?

What is really a puzzler is that they also claim that apps on every other platform are better than Apple's. That the apps are far more useful even though other platforms don't use any form of vetting. Maybe only the best developers go to non-Apple platforms. How could there really be 99,000 useless apps for the iPhone/Touch? I guess the Windows PC platform must have a similar percentage of useless apps, too, even though Windows fans were always bragging about there being more useful applications for Windows PCs than Macs. It's a strange situation of having too many developers and applications. It's considered a negative thing.

100K apps is big number but it's not sustainable because according to a recent study most of the app developers are not making money. I have over 50 apps installed on my iPhone but have only paid for NeuroMobile and few others. NeuroMobile is also one of the few apps that I use every day. So if most of the apps are free and many are only used a few times, the developers are not making money and can't possibly continue to support them.

@Tim: I agree with you that the number of apps is way over-inflated. The free/paid and differing points are just two cases. There's also a ton of ebook apps and shortcut apps (i.e. Mom, Dad, Grandma).

Putting that aside, there are many apps that almost do the same thing but differ in user interface and a little bit (or lot) of functionality. And that to me is how you get useful differentiation in software. Different people want/like to do things different ways, ie, different workflow, and that is captured in different apps. For example, note-taking/journaling/to-do apps.

I have 400 apps (mostly free) on my iPhone. Why so many? My 2 kids also use my iPhone so they have lots of games, many just to try for a while to see if it's worth keeping longer. And for me, I've been trying out many apps to see what works for me, whether it's note-taking or finance or shopping or sports or bibles or language. The variety in each area is a definite plus.

@mark

You can't compare it like that. I have an iPhone 3G and love it but I hate how people and Apple brag about the app store having 100,000+ apps because it's horribly misleading.

How many solitaire apps are on the iPhone? How many chess/checkers/connect 4 clones etc? Sudoku? iFart? Solitaire is solitaire and if there are 10,000 versions of it why should that be something to brag about?

THE TRUTH!:

From my people's count the iPhumb really has only 235 available apps!

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com/

@Mark from Boston

In this instance, it's not the same. I'm not so good with the words needed to articulate my position, but I understand what you're saying, and I'm trying to articulate something different.

Emoji Icons on the iPhone are built into the OS by default, buying one of 100 available apps for $.99 simply unlocks them. Or there's one free one that does it.

We aren't talking about physical products where one guy uses quality parts and another uses discounted crap. It's not even software that does something different.

What we are talking about more closely relates to how many vendors dispense gasoline for your car. It's all the same, but at least for gas stations, they still have Location to differentiate themselves.

Then you have companies like Storm8 that have a suite of "games". Admittedly, I got hooked on World War. These apps aren't games, but they are portals to a web-server. Each of their 8 games have 5 iterations, 1 free and 4 with varying levels of points you can buy. These should be "in-app" purchases, but Storm8 offers them as entirely new apps and I'm sure Apple counts the 1 app as 5 apps. If that wasn't bad enough, Storm8 offers free points on a weekly basis that you have to download the app to unlock. In total, I've downloaded Storm8's World War about 15 times to get free points, based on 15 different iterations of the same app.

And that's just one vendor.

Does Apple count Paid apps that have a free version as 2 apps? If every paid app had a free version, that would only really be 50,000 apps. I'd really like to know what their counting methods actually are.

So what's your point? Some apps are no longer available for reasons unknown? Wow, that is some reporting-some article! Pretty pie chart though. Your catchy headline lacks substance – much like saying "there are 1,000,000 different styles of winter coats for men and women." And it's colorful pie chart would show various colors of coats? Yes, there are zillion iPhone apps – and mistakenly thought your article provided some meat to the bone. Disappointed.

ex ped: The bar graph comparing app stores didn't give you enough to chew on?

@Tim: I've noticed that the electronics at Best Buy are generally duplicative. It carries way too many brands of every kind of electronics; too many TVs, too many computers, too many cameras. It would really be better if there was just one of each thing that could be sold.

"Apple's total includes 3,000 or 4,000 apps available only in its 76 overseas stores."

I don't understand… do you mean the 100,000 apps are only available in North America? And only 4000 overseas?

ex ped: Sorry, I wasn't clear. Overseas stores provide access to the same 100,000 apps the U.S. store offers, I believe, but offer in addition apps that are only available in their particular country. Japanese-language apps, for example.

ped: Have you seen any estimates for downloads for Android handsets? Or any reviews of apps run across the various Android handset designs? Is there any truth yet to the fragmentation theory?

ex ped: I've heard the fragmentation theory, can't confirm independently.

The 10000 downloads a day quote was not by Apple but by Smule for one specific high-ranked app.

As of 9/28 when Apple announced 2 billion downloads, the rate was about 6.6 million apps downloaded per day.

ex ped: Thanks, Mark, for clearing that up.

The 10,000 down loads per day can't be right. That would be only 3.65 milllion per year. That doesn't jive with 2 billion in 2 years.

I can believe 3 million per day but not 10,000.

10,000 a day? More like 3 million a day which would be a billion a year.

The Apple App Store is an ecosystem within an ecosystem (the larger ecosystem, of course, is the Apple product line). And like all ecosystems it is evolving at an almost exponential rate. And while other nascent ecosystems are struggling to compete, the App Store is sucking most of the available "oxygen" away from their efforts, making it extremely tough for them to get a foothold.

If I had to guess, I'd say that primarily Google and Microsoft are positioned to MAYBE generate competitive ecosystems. But that, of course, still leaves the issue of the even larger ecosystem that Apple possesses of seamlessly interacting hardware, storefronts, etcetera.

Which is why I'm convinced that Apple is destined to become far more important in the years to come.

I've noticed that the apps are generally duplicative. How many apps enable the emoji on the iPhone? A lot. When all anyone needs is Spell Number app that does it for free. I'd say the app store could have 30,000 apps and have a lot less fat. Pretty soon, this App counter is going to represent how bloated the store has become with duplicates and not how diverse the programs are.

The Apple news release also claimed over 2-billion apps total downloaded at a rate of 10,000 per day.. .

http://www.apptism.com says its tracking 100,699 apps as of 10:36am Boston time.

Games is the one area where the other new smartphone OSes (i.e., Android, WebOS) fall short in their current implementation and/or device strategy.