What the hundreds of thousands of apps DO show is a thriving third party application ecosystem. Having 10, 20, or 100 apps that do the same thing gives the user multiple choices - perhaps one does it better, or is cheaper, or faster, or uses less battery, or whatever. So on the one hand, indeed in order to accomplish function X you only need one application (or even a part of a full featured application) to accomplish task Y, if you have a choice of several apps you (as a user) feel empowered by choice. You (as a developer) can dog-pile onto whatever the hot "function" is this week and try to make money. You (as a device manufacture) can proudly point to your app store/market place/software catalog and say "this is a thriving platform with lots of choices for users, and lots of ways for developers to make money." And like it or not, that's the world we live in.