It was bound to happen around this time, but Wednesday Apple officially announced that the iTunes App Store has passed 100,000 applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, highlighting the explosive growth and popularity of both the iPhone and the iPod Touch, as well as the app store itself.

The 100,000 application mark is just another milestone for the iTunes App Store that not long ago hit the 2 billion download mark. To put things in perspective, there are about 50 million iPhone and iPod Touch owners around the world, and each one would have to have downloaded about 40 applications to achieve that milestone. Personally i have probably downloaded more apps than that, but there is also only about 25-30 apps that i have found good enough to keep on my iPhone. The rest have a very short lifespan, something that research indicates is a problem for most iPhone apps, as their app stickyness is not great.

With their more recent advertising campaign, it is clear that the size of the iTunes App Store is an important differentiator for Apple, considering that its closest competitor, the Android Market has about 10,000 apps at the moment. One can and should however always ask the question if quantity is better than quality in these situations.

As more an more people dream of finding the next big app idea that makes them instant millionaires, we can only expect the iTunes App Store to continue to grow faster than ever. With the growth also comes the problem of standing out from the crowd, making it increasingly difficult for small time developers to compete with the big time development companies, especially within the gaming sector.

I guess one can now almost officially say; “there is an app for that”.

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