With the launch of the supposed ‘iPhone challenger’ Motorola Droid round the corner, Apple has revealed highly-impressive statistics from its tightly-controlled mobile-applications’ storefront – it has reported that the number of applications available for download at its popular App Store has crossed the enviable 100,000 mark!

The latest figures are all the more notable considering the fact that only a month back Apple had reported that 85,000 apps were available for download at the App Store – and, is a big challenge for Palm, Research In Motion (RIM) and Microsoft who are endeavoring to launch mobile-application stores for their respective devices.

Though the iPhone maker has refrained from making public an estimation of the apps that have thus far been downloaded, data from eWEEK has disclosed that the figures is nearly 2.250 billion.

However, Apple - which has nearly 120,000 developers under its iPhone Developer Program - has, as usual, also refused to give an exact break down about how many of the total downloaded apps are ‘free’ and how many are paid ones. 

Nonetheless, the extraordinary figures from the App Store – which features iPhone and iPod apps in 20 categories, accessible to users in 77 countries – come a couple of days before the scheduled November 6 launch of the Android-based Motorola Droid smartphone, which might encourage developers to create a mobile-application system other than the dominant App Store.