I think people have made a mistake bragging about 'app store numbers'.

When Windows Phone 7 first came along, a lot of the tech press liked to simply score the platforms by the number of apps.

Microsoft originally were pretty hot at stopping the 'free' or 'light' versions of apps being entered, as anything on their store can have a trail mode. From a usability perspective this is just great. However people would compare the app count against android, not discounting the android apps that were just trails etc.

So sadly, as long as people keep talking about app count, it is not in the interest of MS to cleanse it.