App-solutely amazing?
Apple has added the 300,000th application to its App Store, according to one set of statistics, but there are reports that thousands of them are inactive.
According to the latest data from Mobclix, the 300,000 number of apps comprises around 206,000 paid-for apps and some 94,000 freebies. The advertisement research firm believes book and games apps are the most popular choices, followed by entertainment and education.
If Apple's app store passed the 250,000 mark as reported by its CEO Steve Jobs on 1 September, it would appear that the demand for apps and the number that are created is snowballing...but is 50,000 new apps in a matter of weeks a bit too much to believe?
Fortune believes so and points out that Mobclix has based its stats on the number of apps that have been created, not those that are in use and can actually be downloaded.
It says that app trackers that look at the names of titles and compare them to older titles to see which are still live, are a more accurate way to gauge the growth of Apple's App Store. Two trackers, 148apps and App Shopper reportedly said that just fewer than 280,000 apps were available in the US last weekend, so although not quite 300,000, it shows the App Store has been growing pretty fast.
Meanwhile some 113,123 apps are available on the App Store's biggest competitor, Google's Android Market Place, the same weekend, according to AndroLib. Just like Mobclix's figures though, they might be a little opportunistic as they do not monitor if apps are still active and Google itself estimated that around 900,000 Android apps are up for grabs in its Market Place, as announced at last week's earnings report.
Meanwhile, rumours have been doing the rounds of a tech love-in as Steve Jobs invited Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg over for dinner round his (i)pad to chew over a Ping partnership a couple of weeks back, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Before the recent launch of Ping, Apple's social music network that works alongside iTunes, the two giants were believed to be in talks about integration for over a year but the deal apparently failed as Jobs moaned about Facebook's overly stringent terms to The WSJ.
The story goes that Apple had envisaged Ping would be a music sales service sitting alongside Facebook, which would boost traffic without the need for another separate social network.
If Facebook and Apple do get together, it could add to a general integration trend across the tech universe, that has seen Bing and Facebook join together, Skype and Facebook, Windows Live and WordPress and Windows Live and Facebook couple up in recent months.
