Google Confirms: 70,000 Android Market Apps And Growing
This past week, it seems that Apple has simply dominated the news. The buzz definitely has not been for reasons that Apple would want, but either way,
they're pretty much monopolizing press bandwidth. The company's
"Antennagate" has caused a huge ruckus, so much that it has been somewhat
difficult to see past it to all of the other great things going on in
the industry. But there's a stat counter in some supercomputer that
doesn't really care about what happens in the world of Apple, and that
stat counter has been carefully monitoring just how well Apple's primary
rival in the smartphone world has been doing.
Google's Android platform has been gaining serious steam over the past few months. Numbers are up all around, and clearly more people are staying interested. Our recent look at Android 2.2 makes us confident that Google is in the mobile OS space for the long-haul, and it's becoming clear that consumers are interested in staying loyal to the OS, too. AndroLib is a data collection service that monitors Android use, and according to its latest numbers, the Android App Market now has over 70,000 applications available.
Considering that Android launched about a year after the original iPhone, that's pretty darn impressive. Apple's App Store has well over 200,000 at this point, but there's certainly a law of diminishing returns at some point. At some point, there are only a handful of truly useful apps that you would use from either store, and we think that inching up on 100,000 is a pretty big milestone for Android. But beyond that, there's another figure that's pretty meaningful in the most recent round of data collection: the Android App Market has surpassed more than one billion app downloads. A billion!
For anyone who still thought Android was small time, they're going to have a hard time sticking to those guns after hearing that. Of course, only one of these figures have been confirmed by Google (the 70,000 number, which was confirmed during their latest earnings call), but in the past AndroLib has proven to be reliable. It's pretty clear to us that Android is gaining traction and has the will to compete with Apple, and after this week's shaming, people may just reconsider snapping up an Android phone over an iPhone 4 + case.
Google's Android platform has been gaining serious steam over the past few months. Numbers are up all around, and clearly more people are staying interested. Our recent look at Android 2.2 makes us confident that Google is in the mobile OS space for the long-haul, and it's becoming clear that consumers are interested in staying loyal to the OS, too. AndroLib is a data collection service that monitors Android use, and according to its latest numbers, the Android App Market now has over 70,000 applications available.
Considering that Android launched about a year after the original iPhone, that's pretty darn impressive. Apple's App Store has well over 200,000 at this point, but there's certainly a law of diminishing returns at some point. At some point, there are only a handful of truly useful apps that you would use from either store, and we think that inching up on 100,000 is a pretty big milestone for Android. But beyond that, there's another figure that's pretty meaningful in the most recent round of data collection: the Android App Market has surpassed more than one billion app downloads. A billion!
For anyone who still thought Android was small time, they're going to have a hard time sticking to those guns after hearing that. Of course, only one of these figures have been confirmed by Google (the 70,000 number, which was confirmed during their latest earnings call), but in the past AndroLib has proven to be reliable. It's pretty clear to us that Android is gaining traction and has the will to compete with Apple, and after this week's shaming, people may just reconsider snapping up an Android phone over an iPhone 4 + case.
