Android mascots are seen at the Google I/O Developers Conference in San Francisco, California, May 10, 2011. â€" Reuters pic
App store tracker Distimo reports that “the main contributors to reach this milestone are free applications. Roughly, 2/3 of the available applications are free in Android Market. The percentage of free applications has steadily grown month over month from 60 per cent in April 2011 to 68 per cent free content at the end of 2011.â€
Google’s Android Market reached the 400,000 apps milestone 39 months after launching. While it took Apple’s App Store for iPhone two months less (37 months) to reach the milestone, Distimo says that the Android Market is catching up fast.
While Distimo counts apps in the App Store for iPad and iPhone separately, it doesn’t distinguish between tablet and smartphone apps within the Android Market. Combined, the Apple App Stores for iPhone and iPad host approximately 500,000 apps.
A second study by market researcher ABI estimates that iPad users have consumed more than 3 billion apps on their tablets since the launch of the device in 2010.
“Discounting all those apps that were originally developed for Android smartphones, Android still trails greatly behind the iPad in terms of its tablet app offerings,†says ABI research associate Lim Shiyang.
“Many Android tablets in the market are still using older versions of Android, which disadvantages users from enjoying the better effects of apps produced from more advanced software development kits.â€
ABI forecasts that annual app downloads on the Android platform will reach 58 billion by 2016, well and truly eclipsing iPhone app downloads, which are expected to hit 27 billion during the same year. â€" AFP/Relaxnews
Â
No comments:
Post a Comment