Yesterday I marked a report of iTunes App Store crossing the 300,000 mark of live apps. But even before I could find some time to get started about it, it seems that the figure has been disputed already. According to Phillip of Fortune, the 300,000 apps figure came from Mobclix which is primarily an ad network that estimates the no of ads on the basis of ad impressions. However what doesn’t get factored is the inactive / removed apps.
According to Philip a better way to scan the no of apps is to crawl the app store and keep updating the apps list / changes on a daily basis. On the basis of the same, he is able to estimate approx 280,000 apps on the App Store currently (as reported by AppShopper and 148apps). So how long before the App Store hits 300,000 mark? How long before Android catches up?
Android Market is currently hovering around 113k apps mark and with Gingerbread 3.0 coming up before year end, it would be interesting to see how much can it up the momentum.