Apple has confirmed that its iTunes App Store now holds over 100,000 iPhone and iPod touch applications, making it the largest application store in the world. A wide range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel, is available for iPhone and iPod touch owners in 77 countries. The company behind the Mac operating system has also announced that users are responsible for well over two billion application downloads.

“The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world,” Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, said. “The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.”

“The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve,” Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile, added. “With a global reach of over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch users, the App Store has allowed us to develop high quality EA games that have been a huge success with customers.”

“With 10,000 downloads a day, worldwide customer response to our I Am T-Pain App has exceeded our wildest expectations,” Jeff Smith, CEO of Smule, shared. “The App Store has given us a unique opportunity to create and grow a very successful business, and we’re looking forward to an exciting future.”

The official report also mentions that its new iTunes 9 now allows customers to easily organize and sync the dozens or even hundreds of apps some have on their devices, while the company continues to improve search and discovery with Genius for Apps, App Store Essentials selections, sub-category listings and better customer reviews. The Mac maker adds that over 100 new features became available to iPhone and iPod touch users with the release of iPhone OS 3.0 this summer.