The new iPad mini is displayed after its unveiling at an Apple special event at the historic California Theater in San Jose, California. AFP Photo/Kevork Djansezian
Announcing the news on Monday via the tweet "Breaking: today will mark the day the App store has seen 1 million apps ever created since launch (iOS)," Appsfire, an application
discovery company, later clarified that the number represented all apps ever approved for the iPhone and iPad and not all apps currently available, which, according to Apple, stood at 700,000 as of October.
The 300,000 apps that are 'missing' have been forcibly removed or have been replaced by newer versions over the last four years.
Apple's closest competitor, Google, announced on November 1 that its Google Play Store had passed the 700,000-app mark, however, it turns out that six of them were actually fake Apple apps, pretending to be GarageBand, iPhoto, iMove, Keynote, Numbers and Pages. They were discovered on November 18 and promptly removed from the store, but not before a number of Android users had paid between $4.95 and $9.97 to buy them.