Yes, that's sarcasm in the title. Here's the latest: over 85,000 iPhone apps available, 10,000 apps for Android devices, 80 for Palm, and who knows how many for BlackBerry (update: someone heard me, it's 2,500 apps). As of right now, there isn't a Brands category in any of these app stores and I don't foresee that ever happening (wouldn't really make sense anyway). As more big brands release mobile apps, it's becoming harder to keep track of who is doing what.

So I created a Google spreadsheet to try and organize all these apps in one place. I've decided to only focus on the iPhone for now, but should be moving on to the rest soon if there is interest. I'm also probably missing a lot of apps right now but this will, of course, be an ongoing (and hopefully collaborative) effort.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE GOOGLE SPREADSHEET

Some trends

1. Out of the 200+ apps listed so far, only about 15 have an average rating of 4 stars or better
2. AndroLib shows 64% of all Android apps are rated 4 stars or better. Are branded apps in general worse or just on the iPhone? As soon as I build the Android list, we should have a better idea
3. In general, it's pretty obvious the total number of ratings should be a good indicator of the apps overall popularity (not downloads)
4. The biggest category by far is Lifestyle, News being the second
5. Brands are consistently improving apps because I rarely noticed an average overall rating that was lower than the latest version's rating
6. Not surprisingly, free dominates branded apps (about 90%)
7. Top 5 most rated apps: Facebook, Zippo, Barclaycard, Weather Channel, and Google

Update: Steve Smith from MediaPost's Mobile Insider wrote a great article titled Your Brand App Hit Parade that references my spreadsheet. Make sure to check it out if you didn't come from there. Please let me know what branded apps are missing by using this form or send me a reply on Twitter @jsmakr with the brand/app name.

How are they changing the Web? The obvious is iPhone apps are increasingly allowing people to access online content during times when they didn't have access to it before, therefore continuing to speed up the rate of information sharing. Where apps are having trouble is keeping the users interested after a few uses or a short trial period. Social networking apps like the ones for Twitter and Facebook don't have this problem because they are allowing people who are connected on the web to continue their relationships away from their computers. The rising popularity of iPhone apps with location-based capabilities (and soon to come the iPhone version of Google Latitude) are creating useful ways for people to access relevant data about events, businesses, and even people that are nearby. How are they being used by brands? The smart brands are the ones that have already thought of ways to connect with a large base of current iPhone users (Kraft, Obama, Audi, to name a few). Most other major brands are most likely in the process of or just starting to think about developing an iPhone app because of the successes they are continuing to hear about. But only a select few out of the rapidly growing database of 20,000+ apps with be successful because they will either be really useful, linked to a well-liked brand, or very creative. Of course the longer it takes for the app to be released, the smaller the chance of it being successful. It's worthwhile to note that companies like Remember the Milk, Salesforce, Mint.com are creating iPhone apps to supplement their web services as an added benefit to offer to their customers. Some of the most impressive apps aren't just displaying content in a mobile-friendly manner, but also paying very close attention to creating a sleek user interface and coming up with unique ways to engage people using the iPhone's features. What about publishers? They need to recognize that besides an electronic reading device like the Kindle, people are already browsing their content frequently on the iPhone (and most likely not having the best experience if nothing has been developed for them). Even though it will take time, the iPhone will be a big advertising platform for publishers in the future. Besides newspapers, I think most major magazines will have iPhone apps soon. What they will need to figure out is a revenue model that makes sense because as of now the app store does not allow publishers the freedom of charging readers a recurring monthly fee to subscribe to the latest content downloads. The first successful magazine app will owe a lot of it's success from free PR and it looks like Lucky Magazine and People Magazine are very close to launching. Update: Apple has announced that the 3.0 software update will allow subscription based purchases to be made within the app. Great news for publishers. How are they affecting the gaming industry? The cost of the app plays a huge factor, but not as much as you might think. We are starting to see more findings that indicate increases in spending for apps on mobile devices. People are willing to spend $5-$10 on good game because it's an inexpensive alternative when compared to most video games that cost over $40. It's only a matter of time before more games that offer online play gain in popularity just as we saw happen for all the major gaming consoles over the past couple of years and the classis example of the iPhone game Tap Tap Revenge. While no one is sure yet if increasing sales of iPhone games are damaging the sales of the major players, it doesn't take a genius to realize that the iPhone's popularity is already hurting the sales of other handheld gaming devices. Some further reading: 8 reasons for building an iPhone Web application, Mobile ROI: You get what you pay for, and Apple iPhone controls over 66% of all mobile web use.