Mobclix App Store Figures May Not Be Accurate [UPDATED]

Figures released by Mobclix have recently shown that Apple’s App Store hosts roughly 13,000 games at the moment, accounting for 20 percent of the total number of applications, spanning categories like utilities, entertainment, sports, travel, etc. Softpedia reported these findings noting that iPhone application trackers were also indexing close to 60,000 applications for the entire set of App Store offerings. These numbers, however, may not reflect reality, according to another source.

Dan over at Busted Loop has contacted us disclosing lower figures for the total number of apps currently being offered for download via the iTunes App Store. Dan and his team claim to make things out of information, while inventing new uses for data as a reflex. Here’s their site. Their explanation for the lower number was this:

“We read this article on VentureBeat and that 62,965 total apps number just didn't sound right... so we dug into the data and found the total number of apps appearing in the US app store is 55,977 as of about 3pm this afternoon,” the post dating July 7, 2009 (at 7:17PM) reads.

“[The] author of the [...] article based his number on Mobclix data. The Mobclix reports can be misleading because they don't filter for uniqueness,” the report outlines.

“Some apps appear in multiple categories: a single app can appear in the Entertainment category AND in the Action sub-genre of Games, for example. Games are special in this regard. There are no cases of an app that's not classified as a game being in more than one category. For our purposes we only count apps as ‘Games’ if they do not appear in another non-game category,” the report reveals. “There are roughly 3,000 apps in this overlap area, which leaves 10,175 apps that are exclusively categorized as games,” this source claims.

As such, Busted Loop believes there are some 56,000 apps currently living in the App Store, with 10,000 to 13,000 of them being games. While “62,965 apps” does sound like a bit too much (for now), Softpedia reported yesterday that trackers like Apptism listed “nearly” 60,000 apps (57,000 at the time of the writing) for headline purposes. Moreover, Mobclix doesn’t cite 13,000 as the exact number of games, therefore, the two sources’ findings may not differ by a great margin.

However, with Mobclix counting the same app in a different category, Busted Loop’s figures should indeed be closer to the real deal. Besides the graph above, the site also offers a special bonus feature - the total price of apps over that same time period.

Which source do you think is more accurate on the number of applications being offered through the App Store?

Update: Mobclix has contacted Softpedia with clarification that their figures are indeed accurate. Those interested can learn more here.