Windows Marketplace for Mobile: 600 Apps Down, 64,400 to Go…

As Apple marks the one-year anniversary of its App Store with a bit of celebratory smack talk, Microsoft (MSFT) has provided a few more details about its forthcoming rival offering: Windows Marketplace for Mobile store.

At its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans this morning, the company said it will begin accepting applications for the store on July 27, with an eye toward opening it by the end of the year. When it does debut, Marketplace will be available to all Windows Mobile 6 devices, not just 6.5 (as the Windows Mobile Blog notes, that’s 30 million devices), and it will host about 600 Microsoft-vetted apps–quite a few more than Apple’s iTunes App Store offered at launch, but significantly fewer than the 65,000 apps Apple (AAPL) boasts today.