Ahead of a press conference this week where Amazon is expected to introduce its first-ever Amazon smartphone, the company is making a point to call out how much its mobile app ecosystem has grown in recent months. According to news released by the company this morning, the Amazon Appstore now has over 240,000 applications – a number which has nearly tripled year-over-year. In addition, those apps are available in nearly 200 countries. While those numbers are good for Amazon, in relation to its top two competitors in the mobile industry – Apple and Google – the company still has far to go. For comparison’s sake, at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference earlier this month, the company announced it had roughly 1.2 million applications. Meanwhile, Google is estimated to have around the same, leaving the top two stores neck and neck.