Apple Apps—Now More Than 100K
Apple's not-so-secret weapon in its war for mobile dominance reached a stunning plateau this morning: 100,000 apps are now available on the Apple App Store, even as rivals try desperately to play catch-up.
While Android developers try to turn the Googlemobile operating system into a worthy rival with its 12,000 apps, and Palm tries to tout the several hundred available for download, Apple continues to tighten its stranglehold on the claim that it is the platform of choice for the world's developers.
Apple's press release quotes Electronic Arts'Travis Boatman who says, "The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve. 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 Smule, in today's release. "The App Store has given us a unique opportunity to create and grow a very successful business, and we're looking forward to an exciting future."
And just yesterday, eBayCEO John Donahoe told me that PayPal is generating $500 million in new revenue from the App Store, "on a platform that didn't even exist just two and a half years ago."
What's amazing to me is not merely the number of apps being created and downloaded, but the wealth creation and entrepreneurialism the platform is encouraging. Apple created the compelling hardware that is so far ahead of its competition and it's letting the marketplace keep the technology "fresh" with an almost endless library of innovation. Sheer genius.
And all Apple competitors, like Research in Motion , Nokia ,Microsoft , Palm , and Google can do is sit there, mouths agape, wondering what to do next.
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