(Credit: 148Apps)

How many iPhone apps does it take to make 10,000? It all depends on how you do the counting.

Apple watchers have been ruminating on the overall tally and on the counting methods following a report on 148Apps, a site that keeps tabs on iPhone applications, seen here in its entirety:

"In just 142 days, the iPhone OS app store has added over 10,000 apps! An amazing feat for any platform. To commemorate this we've put up a special page.

(We'll hazard a guess that there are actually on the order of 10K mini icons on that "10,000 apps!" special page. A listing to the right side of all those icons gives the total number of apps as 10,091.)

MacRumors.com, meanwhile, quibbles with the overall number, even as it says the actual 10,000 active app mark should be reached "in the next few days":

"While several sites have reported that 10,000 iPhone Apps have been released into the App Store, the actual number of active iPhone apps that can be downloaded is about 9,676 as of today's count. The discrepancy comes from the fact that many apps have been removed from the App Store for various reasons (trademark infringement, discontinued apps, pulled and released)."

The biggest category of iPhone apps, according to 148Apps, is games (2,333), followed by entertainment (1,122), utilities (1,015), education (737) and productivity (517). The average cost of the apps is listed at US$3.12; about one-quarter are free of charge, while one is listed at US$899.99.