Apps - How many?

Ever since the Apple App Store hit the market, people have been obsessed with Apps.

Those little icons with the big ideas - a way in which to improve your life, whether through assistance or through gaming.

The question is - how many apps do you actually need?

The App Store may have hundreds and thousands of apps.  Many of them are of the same vein, others try and fail to achieve their objective.

Don't get me wrong - the app marketplace (whether Apple, Android, BlackBerry or Windows) is an ideal place for a small developer to make some money.  It's also a great place for the large gaming studios to show off their wares.
Apart from the apparent lack of quality from some apps (and the total waste of memory space that entails) we are constantly reminded of the different sizes of the market.


Apple has approved over 1 million apps
Google Play, for Android, has in excess of 700,000
Microsoft has over 20,000 for their Windows 8
BlackBerry has quoted there will be over 100,000 apps in BlackBerry World for their new BlackBerry 10 OS.

I've had a look at my BlackBerry, and at the apps I actually use (the ones that are not pre-installed) on a day-to-day basis.

• gNewsReader as my RSS feeder
• Money Plus is my expense tracker
• Nobex - for podcasts and internet radio
• BeWeather Pro - for weather forecasts
• Dropbox for file management
• CB10 - The CrackBerry app, for all news BlackBerry

The pre-installed apps include BBM, Twitter, Foursquare, LinkedIn and Facebook

There are other apps and games, but if I'm honest, I don't use them that often.

So there you have it - the size of the app store is not important.
It's the quality of the apps that makes the difference, and developers need to listen to their customer base and make the apps we want.

What do you think?