Apple App Store to be bigger than Wal-mart?

A developer of mobile application deployment and analytic tools says project starts for the iPhone show no sign of slowing. According to its figures, Apple's App Store could have more than 100K titles by the end of the year, putting it into Wal-Mart territory. The data comes from a post in Flurry Inc.'s blog by Peter Farago, the company's vice president of marketing. Flurry makes a platform of analytics, deployment and monetization tools for mobile developers. The company said that Flurry Analytics is often integrated early into the development cycle, perhaps 6 months before the app ships. Farago compared its New Project Starts statistic to new starts in the real estate market. He said it provides a reliable indicator for the strength of the application pipeline heading to market.

... Specifically, it measures 3rd party developer support for the App Store, a key to Apple's iPhone strategy, and support which has been increasingly sought after by companies like Google, RIM and Palm. Over the last six months, the number of available applications in the App Store has more than doubled, from 25,000 applications in January to over 65,000 in July, which equates to 14% month-over-month growth. Flurry's month-over-month rate for New Project Starts has been holding steady at 30% for the last several months. Assuming that roughly half of those new project starts are for new applications, the pipeline to the App Store shows no signs of slowing.

Farago said at this 15 percent rate, the App Store shelves will carry more than 100K apps by the end of the year, which is more than the "world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart, which merchandises about 100,000 items per store." There are a couple of other interesting graphs in the report: the first shows the rapid growth of app starts for Google's Android OS. Check out: Microsoft pitches Windows Mobile to iPhone developers Another chart tracked the eBooks category. In July, Flurry counted 3 million "active user sessions" for eBooks. While the Kindle is the leader, the iPhone/iPod Touch platform is a direct competitor, he said.

... According to Apptism, an App Store tracking service, eBooks represents the second largest application category in the App Store with 14% share, only behind Games, which comes in at 19%. With Amazon investing heavily in Kindle, iPhone has quickly emerged as a direct competitor in the eBooks category, further demonstrating the impressive reach of Apple across all digital media.

Meanwhile, expect more of these stats: Motally on Monday announced the launch of its iPhone and RIM Blackberry analytics service.