Apple App Store Surges Past 300,000; iPad-Only Apps Up
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CREDIT: Apple Inc |
It's a bustling market over at the Apple app store.
This clearinghouse for software applications , or apps, that run on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad now stocks over 300,000 programs, up from less than 200,000 in April, according to a new report.
Meanwhile, the proportion of apps made specifically for the iPad has grown from one percent in April to seven percent now; in hard numbers that's around 5,000 apps in April and almost 38,000 new ones last month.
The average cost of iPad apps has also climbed to $4.97 in October from $4.34 in April, according to Distimo, an app store analytics firm.
The iPhone apps went up a smidge on average from $3.94 to $4.03.
The most popular free apps for the iPad and iPhone in September were the NASA App HD and Pimple Popper Lite, respectively; the top paid apps are Friendly for Facebook ($4.99) and Angry Birds ($.99), also respectively.
Distimo's report also reviewed the top sellers in other app stores, such as Android Marketplace, for smartphones that run Google's Android as an operating system, the BlackBerry App World (for BlackBerry phones, natch), the Windows Marketplace for Mobile, the Nokia Ovi Store, and the Palm App Catalog.
None of these are anywhere near as big as Apple's app store, though Android, with 100,000 apps at present, looks set to continue to expand as phones with the operating system are hot sellers.
In the third quarter of this year, almost half of smartphones purchased ran Android , compared to 23 percent with Apple's iOS (just iPhones) and 22 percent Research in Motion's system, which powers the BlackBerry line of phones.
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