Macstories recently reported that the iPad App Store has surpassed the 50,000 apps mark. If unofficial tallies are correct about this milestone, then iPad apps have hit it even faster than iPhone apps did when the App Store first launched in 2008.
iPhone apps took around a year to hit the 50K mark, whereas iPad apps have got there in just over eight months.
Despite the rapid growth of the iPad App Store, it feels to me like there are considerably fewer ‘crap apps’ and novelty apps than there are for the iPhone.
News Via: TUAW

Of course it reached there faster…. "Universal Apps". 50k in apps doesn't mean 50k "new" apps.
My understanding is that even for universal apps, there is a completely separate code package for the iPad version – and most developers I've seen talk about this stuff describe their iPad versions (even those within universal apps) as being very much like brand new apps.
But yeah, point taken – the iPad clearly had a big head start in this respect.