Android app downloads might surpass iOS in 2012

Android smartphones already outsell the iPhone in the U.S. and many other markets, but one area where iOS still reigns supreme is app downloads. That may not last, though: research firm Xyologic estimates that if current trends continue, downloads from the Android market will surpass the iOS App Store in June of 2012. That’s around the same time that the number of available apps are expected to be equal.

Right now, at least 494 million iOS apps are downloaded by users every month. The same figure across most Android devices is just 279 million, but in a short eight months Android will have caught up worldwide, at least by Xyologic’s math. Certain markets already have a heavy Android dominance, including the Czech Republic, Poland and Portugal. It appears that Apple’s tablet dominance will take a lot longer to fall by the wayside – iPad app downloads make up an impressive 15% of its download space. Whatever the equivalent number is for Android’ Honeycomb-optimize apps, it’s nowhere near that.

Notably, Xyologic’s research does not include figures from China, where Android is growing by leaps and bounds despite the (suspected) best efforts of the Chinese government. It also doesn’t include third-party app downloads from the Amazon App Store and others, a factor that might increase exponentially as more and more tablets use the popular solution, to say nothing of the upcoming Amazon Kindle Fire. Keep in mind that all of these estimates are tentative and based upon usage as of August, 2011.

[via Taiwan News]