App Store Tally: 20,000 Apps in Seven Months

iPhone and iPod touch users looking to download software from Apple's App Store now have 20,000 programs to choose from--at least according to one Web site's count.

Apptism, an iPhone app activity aggregator, says that the 20,000th iPhone app was added to the store some time on Tuesday. Rob Libbey of apptism says his site monitors the App Store hourly and constantly updates the total number of apps available. As this article was posted, apptism's tracker had already topped 20,150 apps.

If apptism's count is accurate--when contacted for comment, Apple declined to confirm the number of apps available for download--it would mean that 5,000 new programs had arrived on the App Store in less than a month. After all, it was only January 16, when Apple officially announced that it had topped the 15,000 app mark.

Then again, a 5,000 app influx isn't outside the realm of possibility. On December 5, Apple announced that there were 10,000 apps in the store--meaning it took the company a little more than a month to add the 5,000 apps needed to reach the Apple-confirmed 15,000 mark.

That's a lot of gas-passing simulators and novelty noisemaker apps.

No matter how many apps are in the store officially, the App Store has seen booming business since it came online nearly seven months ago. The store opened its virtual doors on July 11, 2008, with just 500 apps.