Revisiting the App Forecast

From a forecast I made on March 21st: 300k Apps Approved by August:

My initial estimate in February for the 200k milestone was by May 1st. I was clearly off by nearly 40 days. If the add rate is maintained at 20k/mo 300k will come around in August although I’m not as confident in this forecast. The rate of app addition seems to be accelerating.

As of today the Approved app counts are as follows:

AppShopper: 297,165

148apps.com: 296,662

148apps.biz: 296,157

The monthly rate of addition is shown in the following graph:

The 20k/month has been steady during the last 7 months so I think the last 4k apps will be added in the next week, making the 300k roll-over in August, as forecast. The approval rate did not accelerate however but stayed pretty steady. There was a similar plateau in the middle of last year around 10k apps/month.