On its Q3 earnings call, Apple announced that there are over 650,000 apps on the Apple App Store, up from 600K in April of this year. Apple exec Peter Oppenheimer also mentioned that 250,000 of those apps were developed specifically for iPad.
Perhaps more importantly to you hungry entrepreneurs, Apple paid out approximately $5.5 billion to developers. This is a huge jump from the $4 billion figure Apple reported in April.
iOS 6 — with its deep Facebook integration — and the new iPhone, which is expected in September, should only bolster these numbers.
To get a little perspective, Google’s most recent numbers in the Google Play department are at 600,000 apps. That number is from June, and Google has been slowly closing in on Apple, so it’s possible that the two app stores are pretty neck and neck.