How many apps have you made?

Looking for work (both employment and contract/freelance) something has started to become weirdly clear. When I talk to people working on their first mobile app – or even startups working on their first product, which will be mostly a mobile app – more often than not the first question is "what apps have you built?" Often, they ask this again after seeing my whole portfolio, and otherwise looking me up. Frighteningly often, they ask literally how many apps (for a particular platform, usually) I have made. As though quantity is more important than actual experience, skills or results. And before you say the obvious, that they are just checking out your experience in their domain, let me stop you. No one else asks questions like this. Building a mobile website? Just as one example, they are almost always interested in services, paper, graphic design, desktop web, desktop apps, and mobile apps. As well as your experience in mobile web. Actually many of them are multi-channel so prefer experience in all these. They ask about the whole range, not just for mobile web examples. But not the guys launching an all new free-standing app. What is it with app-centric people?