Thanks to Macworld's iPhone Central (http://www.macworld.com/article/137352/2008/12/300million.html?lsrc=rss_weblogs_iphonecentral), we learn today that Apple has purchased full-page ads in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal that include the news - in small print at the bottom of the ads - that the iTunes App Store has now distributed "over 300 million" iPhone apps from a total of "over 10,000" titles available.

You'll notice that we said "distributed", not "sold", seeing as how Apple's ads don't distinguish between paid and free apps - and free apps are understandably a high percentage of their offerings.

Still, the 300m and 10,000 figures are a substantial increase from the 200m apps distributed and 5550 apps offered cited by Steve Jobs during Apple's October 21 fourth-quarter earnings conference call (http://www.macworld.com/article/136248/2008/10/apple_financials.html).

No matter how you slice it, those 300 million must include a ton of downloads of The Blimp Pilots' Koi Pond (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=286420263&mt=8), the most popular paid app, and Pandora Media's Pandora Radio (http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284035177&mt=8), the most popular free app in Apple's list (http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/browserRedirect?url=itms%253A%252F%252Fax.itunes.apple.com%252FWebObjects%252FMZStore.woa%252Fwa%252FviewCustomPage%253Fname%253DpageiTunes2008_Apps) of the top 25 paid and free apps from the iTunes App Store. ®