Right, the number of app stores increased by 217% and so the one store (or two?) belonging to Apple lost share of the market. Not a very illuminating statistic.
I bet they are still selling more apps than ever before.
This article is just to drive page views. The website sells investment reports, it has a ticker across the page with fake recommendations.
I suspect more than 90% of the articles on HN are either to drive pageviews/sell someone something. Your first sentence and "The website sells [blank]" could apply to almost every website. But there is content to be discussed.