During last weekend’s virtual port-a-thon 15,000 BlackBerry 10 apps were submitted to BlackBerry AppWorld.

First lets acknowledge that most of these apps are probably junk. This event was clearly about quantity over quality, and the event delivered on the big round numbers. In all likelihood the majority of these apps were repackaged html sites, or quickly ported Android apps. The good news is that I am sure that some people will find some of these quickly ported apps very useful, and that the mix is probably not any worse than a random selection of 15,000 apps from Apple’s App Store would be.

The good news is that fifteen thousand is a very impressive, very big number. To give some context, BlackBerry AppWorld was originally launched in 2009 with less than 2,000 apps. It wasn’t until at least two years later that the total size of the store grew to 15,000 applications. Windows 8 (which launched three months ago) is currently showing only 19,337 apps available in my region, and there is no doubt that BlackBerry 10 has long since blown by that number.

I really hope that RIM has a plan to get all of these apps through the approval process in a timely manner. I will be submitting some more apps later this week, that I would really like to have in the store by the time that BlackBerry 10 phones are on the shelves. The fact that 15,000 apps just got placed ahead of them in the queue is slightly worrying.