iPhone now has more commercial apps than Windows Mobile

Apple's App Store has reached the 25,000 application mark after adding another 5,000 applications in less than a month. The new tally also means that the App Store now has the most applications of any mobile platform, beating out the collection Windows Mobile has built up over nine years.

Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS has been around for nearly nine years now, and in that time a substantial number of applications have been released for it. In fact, Windows Mobile has held the title of the mobile platform with the most applications for a long time. Not anymore, however—Apple's App Store has finally overtaken Windows Mobile as the (commercial) mobile application leader. Or it's at least giving it a run for its money.

The App Store hit the 20,000 application mark in early February, and has continued to gain applications at an impressive rate. Last week, Fortune noted that App Store tracker 148Apps.com showed over 25,000 applications available on the App Store, meaning that the time necessary for the App Store to pick up 5,000 has decreased yet again as developers add applications at a faster rate.

The other side of the equation is the number of Windows Mobile applications. People don't pay quite as much attention to Windows Mobile as they do to the iPhone, but the Global Intelligence Alliance did include it in an analysis of major mobile platforms that was released in late February. The report says that there are "more than 20,000 different types of software" available for the platform, many from third-party sites. Assuming those numbers are true, the App Store has knocked off nine years of Windows Mobile applications after less than nine months, which is quite an impressive feat.

credited to arstechnica.com