Earlier this week, Apple said that there were more than 170,000 iPad-native apps available in the App Store. Two days later, it claimed the number was 200,000. How did it find 30,000 new iPad apps in that time?
Here’s the quote from today’s iPad launch press release (dated March 7 in the US):
iPad runs almost all of the over 585,000 apps available on the App Store, including more than 200,000 native iPad apps.
And here is what Apple said earlier this week (March 5) when it announced 25 billion app downloads:
The revolutionary App Store offers more than 550,000 apps to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users in 123 countries around the world, with more than 170,000 native iPad apps available.
There are two potential explanations: Apple is counting potential retina display upgrades as separate apps, or (more likely) it deliberately flattened the numbers earlier in the week to make today’s launch numbers look better. Either way, it’s a reminder that claims like this need to be taken with a serious grain of salt.
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