iPhone applications top 300,000 as app store battle heats up

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs announced the computing giant's App Store now boasts 300,000 applications for its iOS platform, touting the growth as a significant competitive advantage in its battle with Google and Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM). "With 300,000 apps on Apple's App Store, RIM has a high mountain ahead of them to climb," Jobs said Monday during a surprise appearance on Apple's quarterly earnings call. "Well, what about Google? Last week, [Google CEO] Eric Schmidt reiterated that they are activating 200,000 Android devices per day. And have around 90,000 apps in their app store. For comparison, Apple has activated around 275,000 iOS devices per day on average for the past 30 days with a peak of almost 300,000 iOS devices per day on a few of those days."

Along with the App Store's impressive software inventory, Jobs trumpeted the storefront's integrated user experience. "In addition to Google's own app marketplace, Amazon, Horizon and Vodafone have all announced that they are creating their own app stores for Android. So there will be at least four app stores on Android, which customers must search among to find the app they want and developers will need to work with to distribute their apps and get paid. This is going to be a mess for both users and developers," Jobs said. "Contrast this with Apple's integrated App Store, which offers users the easiest-to-use, largest app store in the world, preloaded on every iPhone. Apple's App Store has over three times as many apps as Google's marketplace and offers developers one-stop shopping to get their apps to market easily and to get paid swiftly."

Jobs added that the App Store now offers more than 35,000 applications optimized expressly for Apple's iPad tablet, which he cited as one of several advantages boosting the device in the face of competition from a wave of rival units. "This new crop of tablets will have near zero [apps]," Jobs said, adding "We think the current crop of seven-inch tablets are going to be DOA--dead on arrival."

Apple reported fiscal Q4 revenues totaling $20.34 billion, up from $12.21 billion a year ago. The company sold 14.1 million iPhones during the quarter, almost double the 7.4 million sold in the year-ago quarter and smashing its previous record of 8.75 million units.

For more on the App Store's growth:
- read this Guardian article

For more on Apple's Q4 results:
- read this release
- and be sure to check out FierceWireless' Q3 earnings page

Related articles:
App Store adds On the Grid section for location-based apps
Apple bolsters App Store security in wake of developer fraud
Free applications make up 81 percent of App Store downloads
Apple purging widget applications from App Store
Books now outnumber games in Apple's App Store