According to latest industry figures just released, the Apple Apps store now has approved over 100,000 applications, with around 95.000 now available to download. The company had declared in September that downloads of applications from the store had reached 2 billion since its opening back in July 2008.

Applications have become big business in the last year or so and many other companied have tried to exploit that fact by opening application stores of their own. None come close in figures to what Apple offer though, with Google’s Android Market being their closest competitors with just over 10,000 applications on offer at present. Nokia have their OVi Store but it lags far behind its competitors with only 660 applications available.

There have been criticisms about Apple’s stringent policy for accepting and approving applications, but judging by the numbers of applications available and by the number still awaiting approval, it doesn’t appear to be putting developers off too much. It doesn’t appear to be putting customers off either by judging by the sheer number who are using the store to download to their iPhones.

With so many applications available it is a great revenue source for people like Apple with their average price per application-not taking into account free apps-$3.25. There are however a lot of free applications available and the Apple store has just under 20,000, but Blackberry App World just beats that with 20% of free applications as they offer 747 free applications from 3040 total in store. Nokia are actually the best for free applications -so for all you freebie lovers, a Nokia smartphone might prove cheaper in the long run-with very nearly one third of them costing you nothing to download.

With analysts predicting the smartphone market to increase 29% year on year the future for application stores looks bright. It may not be so bright for Apple however as forecasts predict their share in the market will fall, with Apple’s Google platform being the most popular by 2012, with Nokia Symbian the number two and Apple only third and even then fighting it out with RIM for that position.

Apple may have the most applications and biggest market share at present, but with more competition for the iPhone released every day that won’t last very long.

Are you a fan of applications? What’s been your best free download? Let us know by leaving your comments, we’d love to hear them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 11:30 am and is filed under General, Networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.