There are now over 10.000 native iPad apps in the App Store. The iPad was released on April 3 in the US, but the App Store started populating with apps days before the release date.

To give you a brief insight on how Apple approves the submitted apps, we’ve been following the iPad App Store stats for the past 3 weeks checking the number of available apps every day, multiple times a day at different times (PST).

It turns out that Apple is approving around 200 apps every day during the week, but the number dramatically drops during weekends. At this rate,  the App Store should hit the 20.000 mark pretty soon, on August. About 35.000 apps should be available by the end of this year, 9 months after the introduction of the iPad in the US.

Check out the numbers below:

- 3.21 pm - 6825 Apps - 5/21

- 3.41 am - 7026 Apps - 5/21

- 5.15 am - 7201 Apps - 5/22

- 6.13 am - 7220 Apps -  5/24

- 3.22 am - 7332 Apps - 5/25

- 10.05 am - 7496 Apps - 5/26

- 2.16 pm - 7534 Apps - 5/26

- 11.14 am - 7606 Apps - 5/27

- 5.10 am - 7857 Apps - 5/28

- 5.40 pm - 7926 Apps - 5/29

- 5.18 am- 7999 Apps - 5/29

- 8.27 am - 8027 Apps - 5/31

- 12.39 am - 8413 Apps - 6/2

- 6.41 am - 8814 Apps - 6/4

- 5 am - 8939 Apps - 6/5

- 8.57 am - 9090 Apps - 6/6

- 4.22 am - 9457 Apps - 6/9

- 16.09 pm - 9571 Apps - 6/10

- 12.22 pm - 9776 Apps - 6/10

- 6.40 am - 9880 Apps - 6/11

- 12.58 pm - 9914 Apps - 6/11

- 6 pm - 9985 Apps - 6/11

We’ve also been collecting the number of available apps in each category.  At 6.27 pm (PST) of June 11th  there were 9885 apps in the iPad App Store:

1001 paid Books apps, 154 free Books apps;

167 paid Business apps, 96 free Business apps;

705 paid Education apps, 159 free Education apps;

653 paid Entertainment apps, 190 free Entertainment apps;

78 paid Finance apps, 39 free Finance apps;

150 paid Healthcare & Fitness apps, 27 free Healthcare & Fitness apps;

300 paid Lifestyle apps, 165 free Lifestyle apps;

136 paid Medical apps, 43 free Medical apps;

322 paid Music apps, 93 free Music apps;

128 paid Navigation apps, 37 free Navigation apps;

103 paid News apps, 170 free News apps;

208 paid Photography apps, 43 free Photography apps;

392 paid Productivity apps, 105 free Productivity apps;

486 paid Reference apps, 81 free Reference apps;

124 paid Social Networking apps, 65 free Social Networking apps;

152 paid Sports apps, 34 free Sports apps;

491 paid Travel apps, 59 free Travel apps;

498 paid Utilities apps, 148 free Utilities apps;

58 paid Weather apps, 18 free Weather apps.

and

2107 Games.

6152 are paid apps and 1726 are free apps. That makes a total of 7878 non-Games applications. Except for Games, 78% are paid applications and 22% are free applications. According to a Mobclix report published back in April (one day after the introduction of the iPad) 80% of the iPad apps in the Store were paid apps, and only 599 apps were free. Clearly the trend hasn’t changed yet (unlike the iPhone App Store). Books, Education, Entertainment, Reference and Travel are the leading categories.

From the stats above, the iPad looks like a premium platform for paid software, where apps for media consumption (books, online reading, movies and music) are the most popular ones. It will be really interesting to see what’s going to happen in the upcoming weeks, when the second wave is rumored to hit.