Apple boasts there's now 100,000 apps for iPhone

Apple is running away with the market for smartphone applications (or apps), according to the latest figures. Apple has revealed that developers have created over 100,000 apps for Apple's App Store, making it the 'largest applications store' in the world. Apple also claims that there have been over two billion apps downloaded from the store in less than 16 months since the App Store went online.

By contrast the Android Marketplace set up for users of Android handsets has only 11,763 apps, and the Blackberry App World is third with just 3,040 apps. Given the preponderance of iPhone commercials focusing on the enormous variety of apps available for the iPhone (the 'there's an app for that' commercials) show that Apple realises that everything from restaurant guides to games and Sat Nav programs make its iPhone an attractive handset to many.

Ironically given the vast number of apps available for the iPhone, Apple has had several run ins with the UK ASA on its claims that 'there's an app for nearly everything.'

Most iPhone commercials running on TV have focused on the number of third party applications available for the hot handset, so it's clear that Apple believes that many people buy its phone because all the apps available for it. And it's Apple's pioneering efforts at making its apps easy to buy online, and in most cases easy for developers to sell (or give away as freeware) that have given the iPhone such a big lift. Even though Microsoft claims that there are in fact more than 20,0000 Windows Mobile apps available, a mere 246 are available for download at the the company's Windows Mobile Marketplace.

But Apple's mastery of creating an easy to pay marketplace means that PayPal says it 'generating $500 million in new revenue from the App Store, on a platform that didn't exist just two and half years ago.'

An analysis of the categories of application available on the Apple App Store provides an interesting insight into what people are actually doing with their iPhones, as well as just making calls and texts with them. They are playing games on the iPhone big time; around 16% of the 100,000 odd Apps are gaming titles, and this is why the iPhone has emerged as a serious mobile gaming platform, which has got companies like Sony and Nintendo worried.

'The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve,' said Travis Boatman, a VP at games giant, EA. 'With a global reach of over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch users, the App Store has allowed us to develop high quality EA games that have been a huge success with customers.'

'With 10,000 downloads a day, worldwide customer response to our I Am T-Pain App has exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Jeff Smith, CEO of another gaming company, Smule.

Around 13% of the iPhone apps are e-books and 5% of the apps are news sites, two figures which have prompted industry analysts that the iPhone (and its telephony-free cousin the iPod touch) are also emerging as major players in the eBook market, which giants like Amazon and Sony were planning to carve up.

The ironic thing about the emergence of a huge market for iPhone applications is that Apple was reluctant to open the handset for third party developers in the first place, and unlike many other handsets from rival makers, the iPhone has major limitations on running more than one application at a time.