Apple's App Store reaches 1.3 million applications

During the iPhone 6 unveiling, which took place the other day, Apple also said that its mobile application storefront, the App Store, is now home to over 1.3 million apps.

The previous update from Apple came in June, when the company announced that the App Store had reached the 1.2 million apps mark. In comparison, as of August of this year, Google's Android Play Store housed over 1.3 million applications. Chances are that at the current time, Android's Play Store contains a slightly higher number of titles, but it has to be noted that while developers can freely put their apps for sale on Google's store, iOS developers need to submit all of their apps to Apple first, in order for them to go through a QA testing process. Of course, there have been many developers throughout the years who have wished that Apple's testing procedure wasn't in place, but the truth is that this has assured an overall higher level of app quality and consistency in the App Store, compared to that of its alternatives.

Meanwhile, the third app ecosystem, Windows Phone, continues to be far behind both iOS and Android, with a much smaller catalog of about 300,000 apps, as of this April. Microsoft argues that much of the essential titles are already covered, but with numbers like this, it's undeniable that the app gap between WP and its rivals is still quite big.

In order to summarize the latest data, here's how the top 3 mobile operating systems currently rank when it comes to the extensiveness of their app catalogs:

 

	iOS	Android	Windows Phone
App catalog	1.3 million	1.3 million	300,000