500,000 iOS apps in the App Store and Counting

The App Store has apparently crossed 500,000 app approvals in two years and ten months since its inception. The news came from Chomp, 148apps and EA-owned games publisher Chillingo. They posted an awesome infographic which you can see below. According to Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt:

Sometime after midnight Tuesday morning,  the iTunes team pushed through a batch of app submissions that sent the total over a six-figure milestone. In 34 months, Apple has approved more than 500,000 iPhone, iPad and iPod touch apps for the company’s U.S. store. (Through attrition, replacement and withdrawal, number of apps currently available for download is 20% lower, around 400,000.)

To celebrate the event, three app-related companies — mobile app blog 148apps, search company Chomp and game developer Chillingo — have issued a jumbo-sized infographic, a portion of which is reproduced above. The fact-packed poster includes a timeline, loads of factoids and a best-seller list topped by Angry Birds, which spent 275 days in the No. 1 spot.

As of January, more than 10 billion apps had been downloaded from Apple’s App Store. Its closest competitor, the Google Android Marketplace, launched 8 months later, currently boasts 294,000 apps and 3 billion app downloads.