What is the purpose of the IF statement in the PHP code snippet provided?

The purpose of the IF statement in the PHP code snippet is to check if the variable $number is less than 10. If the condition is true, it will output "Number is less than 10", otherwise it will output "Number is greater than or equal to 10".

$number = 5;

if ($number < 10) {
    echo "Number is less than 10";
} else {
    echo "Number is greater than or equal to 10";
}