(Bill Detwiler, TechRepublic) AppShopper, a Web site which tracks iPhone and iPod Touch applications, has noted that Apple’s App Store has surpassed 100,000 approved apps, although just over 93,000 are available. This revelation and the raging debate over the iPhone’s usefulness as a business device, got me thinking about just how many “business” apps were available in the App store.

After a little browsing and some quick math, it seems that as of this writing there are just over 2100 apps categorized as “Business” in the App Store. I arrived at this number by selecting the Business category from iTunes’ App Store drop-down menu, counting the number of apps displayed on the page (20), and multiplying that by the number of pages withing the Business category (109). 20 * 109 = 2180. If we take our total of 2180 and divide it by 100,000, we get 2.18 percent.

Now, I know this number is a very, very rough estimate. It’s likely that the last page of the Business category actually has fewer than 20 apps listed on it. It’s also much more likely that not all apps used for business are categorized under Business in the App Store. For example, the Facebook app is listed under the App Store’s Social Networking category, but I would argue that a great many people actually use Facebook for business. The same can be said for a great many other apps, such as the navigation utilities, time management apps, email tools, and more

But even if my 2 percent count is off by even two, three, or even four times, the App Store’s relatively anemic business offering only strengthens the argument of those IT pros who decry the iPhone as a glorified MP3 player and not a true enterprise mobile device.