Conduit Reports Big Numbers: 250,000 App Publishers, 170 Million Users

Conduit, the venture-backed company that enables publishers to create and distribute apps on the Web via browser toolbars, is posting some big numbers today.

The startup says its network now boasts more than 250,000 web publishers, and that they’re able to reach some 170 million users. Roughly 23 new users install Conduit Engine every single second, the company adds.

Those stats led Conduit president Adam Boyden to make some bold claims about its size, relative to that of the mobile apps market:

“While most of the buzz in the media is about mobile apps, the reality of the situation is that 118 million more people use Conduit-powered apps than iPhone and Droid apps combined.”

Not exactly an apples to apples comparison, but it does indicate that Conduit Network has quietly become a whopper of a distribution channel for a number of big brands, including Amazon, Coke Zero, eBay, Facebook, Fox News, Hulu, Skype, YouTube, and Zynga.

According to Conduit, its App Marketplace (think of it as an app store for Web applications delivered via cross-browser toolbars) is seeing notable growth, particularly. The company says 60 million end users consume apps from the marketplace on a daily basis, not only benefiting major brands but also lesser known software developers.

Since August 2009, Conduit claims the number of Web publishers that have more than one million users has grown from 1 to more than 40 in May 2010.

At this scale, Conduit is able to deliver some interesting trends on Web app usage, and that’s exactly what they’ve provided us with. Full disclosure: note that there’s a TechCrunch App in Conduit’s marketplace somewhere, which the company refers to.

Quoting ad verbatim from the press release:

Entertainment apps are the largest segment among the hundreds of verticals represented in Conduit App Marketplace; 24.4 percent of the apps were created in this category since the launch of the marketplace.

End users are also hungry for news online and app publishers responded; 19.5 percent of apps in the marketplace deliver news from sources such as Fox News, iVillage, and TechCrunch.

The number of social media apps followed closely, constituting 18.2 percent of all available apps. Also noteworthy, the social media apps category grew fastest among end users during the last year, with adoption increasing on average by 87% each month.

Are you a Conduit user? Why (not)?