Google's Android now has more free apps than Apple's iPhone

Emil

Posts: 152   +0

Google's Android Market now offers more free apps for download (134,342 apps), than Apple's App Store for iPhone (121,845 apps). This is great news for Android consumers, although Android developers probably aren't too thrilled. Furthermore, the number of paid apps on the Android Market is about one third of the total number of paid apps available in the Apple App Store for iPhone, according to app store analytics provider Distimo.

The analytics firm predicts that in five months, the Android Market will be the largest store in terms of number of apps, followed by the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad, Windows Phone Marketplace, BlackBerry App World, and Nokia Ovi Store, assuming all the app stores maintain their current growth rate. Interestingly, Windows Phone Marketplace will pass Nokia Ovi Store and BlackBerry App World before it even celebrates its first birthday - that is quite an achievement given the saturation of the app market.

Distimo says it only saw moderate growth in most of the app stores over the course of the past several months, but overall growth picked up again in March. Here are the app stores in decreasing order of growth: Mac App Store, Windows Phone Marketplace, BlackBerry App World, Android Market, App Store for iPad, Nokia Ovi Store, Palm App Catalog, App Store for iPhone, and GetJar.

Google's Android Market passed the 200,000 apps mark in December 2010 while Apple's App Store passed the 300,000 apps mark in September 2010. Because Android is open, the platform's users can download apps from more than one app store.

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Good to hear, more apps for my Andy phone the better. On that market business, yeah, there are plenty of them, Android Market, Amazon's App Store, YAAM to name a few.

Ironically though, that makes searching for apps a bit of an effort at times though, because unlike Apple's App Store (Which lists pretty much every app available for the iOS platform excluding Cydia Apps) you have to go on a bit of a manhunt to find the apps you want.

On that note, I also noticed that the amount of unpolished apps seem higher on the Android platform... Not a particularly bad thing, but again, riding on my earlier point, when finding the app you want, and coming across a broken/ unusable one, its quite frus.

But the bright side is my Android mobile is what I wanted from a smartphone, and more, more than anything an iPhone could be.
 
First the fiasco with the iPhone 4, now they are going to lose the title of biggest app store. Finally apple might rethink their overpriced products.
 
Win7Dev said:
First the fiasco with the iPhone 4, now they are going to lose the title of biggest app store. Finally apple might rethink their overpriced products.
You've got more chance of NASA announcing that the moon is really a balloon made of cheese.
 
Appstore in general is over rated imho. I guess most people are downloading only bullshit.

And about apple more paid application. Yes ripping off people =/= better appstore.

Last week example: Mortal kombat soundboard. For android free for iphone 0.99$ ok I know its "only" 1$ but its a useless soundboard so worth 0$. Anyway android can charge nothing. In this example I open my browser go to a flash based free website and have the chance to listen to mortal kombat soundboard for free anyway.

So a usual mistake by apple users. Paying and paying a lot doesnt mean you are buying quality. You are only scammed.
 
Lurker101 said:
Win7Dev said:
First the fiasco with the iPhone 4, now they are going to lose the title of biggest app store. Finally apple might rethink their overpriced products.
You've got more chance of NASA announcing that the moon is really a balloon made of cheese.
Wait... are you saying it's not?!?!
 
Win7Dev said:
First the fiasco with the iPhone 4, now they are going to lose the title of biggest app store. Finally apple might rethink their overpriced products.

The whole app store legal battle is not over yet. They're willing to go to the Supreme Court if they have to...

Can't be the biggest app store if you can't call yourself an app store. =)
 
I love my Anodirod phone I really do, but really as the app store gets larger the only real thing that's there is more crap. Yes there are (134,342 Free apps) but it's about 1:200 is not a copy or a remake of something that has already been made 200 times before it.

At the end of the day it feels more like there are maybe 600~800 apps/games and a whole lot of copies.
 
Of course, cheap is always more popular. Why do we see more Hondas than Ferraris on the street.
 
On either platform, there are about 20 free apps worth having, and about a similar number of paid ones. The rest are copies with minor variations, pointless, poorly implemented, trivial and/or rubbish.

Comparing the platforms on the basis that one of them has more apps than the other is about as meaningful as comparing two beaches on the basis that one has more pebbles than the other.
 
NickV said:
Google is the best!!!
I think it is very interesting that you people are very quick to cut Apple down and put Google up there in their place without taking so much as a single thought that you could be making the situation worse (theoretically). Google (with the exception of Sony's fiscal year that has been) has been one the worst known violators and abuses of privacy with many privact groups still lobbying relentlessly for action to be taken against them.

Look: I really hate Apple (I hate Mac users more though as they always seem to be uptight pretentious WANKERS) but Google is not going to make your crap smell like roses and your lemon trees grow money as leaves.


Everyone is all too quick to forget a certain Animal Farm…
 
The analysis is so superficial as to be amazing. Wow! Android now has more free f@rt and burp apps than iOS. Let's ignore that Apple has ceased to allow yet more slight variations on stupid themes: i.e., there are more than enough f@rt apps for iOS.

More important is the question of whether there will be more paid apps for Android by July. The answer is actually "no" for several reasons. First, Google couldn't care less whether developers put out quality products or make money. Google makes money selling ads. Apple makes money selling hardware and the apps that make it the hardware valuable. As a result Android developers just aren't making money. See http://tinyurl.com/3mbttsx for an objective analysis of this. For an admittedly non-objective analysis, see Daniel Eran Dilger's post http://tinyurl.com/3v3or5d and try to break his logic.
 
yeah... what is this fascination with quantity? Wouldn?t a better measure be downloads per user or something like that? More apps to me means more crap to sift through to find a good one, and when I want something like a battery usage helper (last one I downloaded) there are a few to choose from, so I gotta try them all, which is a pain. Legitimate user ratings (not from the developers) should filter out bad ones for me. I wonder if there?s an app for that?
 
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