Apple’s App Store now features over 300,000 apps, up from just under 200,000 in April. Out of these, almost 38,000 are iPad apps according to a new report from app store analytics firm Distimo. Developers released an average of 5,452 iPad apps and 12,218 iPhone apps per month since April. About 7% of all iOS apps are currently universal apps for both the iPhone and iPad.
Some reports already announced that the App Store had crossed the 300,000 apps milestone in the middle of last month, but these numbers were heavily disputed as they also included inactive apps.
No matter the exact numbers, though, the sheer size of the App Store today poses numerous challenges for both Apple and its users. An app store of this size must hide hundreds of great apps, for example, that simply go undiscovered. With more than 15,000 new apps per month for iPhone and iPad, app discovery is a major problem that nobody has really solved yet.
App Pricing
The Distimo team also took a closer look at how developers are pricing their apps. Since the launch of the iPad, apps for Apple’s tablet computer were always more expensive than iPhone apps and this trend continues. The average iPad app now costs almost $5, while the average iPhone app is about $1 cheaper ($4.03). This trend is even more pronounced in the top 100, where iPad apps cost an average of $5.80 and iPhone apps come in at just $2.14. Distimo argues that iPad owners are willing to pay far more for their apps than iPhone owners, yet developers are not yet pricing their apps accordingly.
