Holy App Store Batman

500 in July to 10,000 in December took five months. Two months later the number of iPhone apps in the iTunes App Store has doubled to 20,000. We've touched on some the pluses and minuses of such explosive growth before, but its worth looking at some aspects again.

This is unprecedented growth, much faster than the original music store in iTunes and shows an incredible amount of global developer activity. The acceptance of the platform is amazing.

On the downside:

• It presents late entrants with a much greater barrier to getting exposure. Marketing strategies gain more importance everyday.
• It presents users with a real issue in working out what apps are worthwhile. Apple need to continue to improve the tools in the App Store
• It puts continuing pressure on potential earnings for developers

On the upside:

• Downloads appear to be keeping pace and people are actually using apps
• Users are investing emotionally and financially in personalizing their iPhone creating stickiness
• The critical mass of the iPhone platform continues to gather steam making it easier for businesses to justify investing in developing on a single mobile platform for sometime to come.
• The success of the App Store will continue to drive iPhone sales. The size of the market becomes more viable everyday, for collaborative or aggregation type opportunities as well as just selling apps.

Conclusions

Somewhere, sometime, someone will probably say 20,000 apps is enough and there is nothing else left to build ... just before the next killer app is launched. 

The market for iPhone and iPod Touch Apps is maturing. It now requires more traditional business planning, particularly around market sizing, ensuring your investment in development is appropriate for the risk and that you have a strong marketing plan to make sure you stand out.

However the world is always ready for the next great innovation. If you have got "the idea" for the next unique or highly targeted app, it doesn't matter if you are competing with 100,000 there is still room to go for it.

Here's how to become an iPhone Developer in 8 easy steps, or just talk to us.