473,000 of those apps are said to be optimized for iPad, Apple says differently

Dec 9, 2013 12:16 GMT  ·  By

Data from app discovery service Appsfire suggests Apple is a liar, or that the Cupertino company isn’t very good at counting. But chances are it’s Appsfire who probably counted wrong.

A tweet from Appsfire fired off on December 7 says, “[BREAKING] The @appstore just reached 1 MILLION live apps (473k optimized for iPad)! (from 1 million approved in nov/2012).”

Normally, one wouldn’t even think Appsfire is wrong, since it’s their business to know their apps and help developers capitalize on them. However, one of Apple’s recent press releases states otherwise.

In announcing the new iPad Air, Apple dished out the usual specs along with the App Store integration, saying (emphasis ours), “iPad customers have access to the revolutionary App Store, which now offers more than one million apps to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users in 155 countries around the world, and more than 475,000 apps are designed specifically for iPad.”

So that’s more than 1 million apps for all iDevices and 475,000 just for the iPad on October 22, not December 7. Either Apple jumped the gun on that milestone, or Appsfire needs to get its facts straight.

The company also adds in the same press release, “More than 60 billion apps have been downloaded from the App Store, which offers customers an incredible range of apps in 24 categories, including newspapers and magazines in Newsstand, games and entertainment, kids, education, business, news, sports, health and fitness and travel.”

The Cupertino giant usually brags about reaching major milestones such as this one, but this year was an exception as the company preferred to stay mum when it approved the 1 millionth iOS app.

Also worth noting is that Apple has actually approved way more than a million apps since the App Store’s inception in 2008, but it has been forced to reject or retract many of them for violation of terms.