According to Apptism, a site which tracks iPhone applications, the App Store has already surpassed the 20,000 application mark. So why hasn’t there been an official announcement from Apple?

It’s entirely possible that these statistics are incorrect. As we speak, Apptism has the App Store pegged at 20,400 applications and counting. Another iPhone application tracking site, AppShopper, has the count closer to 19,500. That is around 900 applications that are unaccounted for, what gives?

Apptism doesn’t allegedly account for the applications that have been deleted from the store such as the now infamous Duck Hunt. That would explain the huge discrepancy between the two tracking sites.

We are going to play by the rules and wait until Apple has officially announced their tally before we bust out the champagne. If the AppShooper is correct, this should be happening in less than a week. What’s another week anyway?

Just to put this achievement into perspective, the App Store officially launched on July 11th, 2008 with around 500 applications. Since that time, Apple has quickly picked up the pace. On December 5th, 2008 Apple announced the App Store had reached the 10,000 application mark and on January 16th, 2009 they reached 15,000 applications. If the count keeps on climbing rapidly, we could see the App Store gain another 5,000 applications in less than a month.