According to a recent report by Lookout’s App Genome Project, the number of Android Marketplace apps increased by over 125% since August, putting it on pace to outgrow iTunes apps three to one. Apple still commands a sizeable lead in the total number of apps it offers through iTunes versus AM, the gap is narrowing quickly.
“If apps continue to be developed for each platform at this same rate, said Lookout CTO Kevin Mahaffey, “the Android Market will have more apps than the Apple App Store by mid-2012.”
More developers are writing for Apple, however, since the iTunes store offers a greater ratio of paid apps to free apps, but Android developers are writing more apps per capita than iTunes developers. And more apps are accessing sensitive privacy data like user location and contact information. That may be cause for concern, but Lookout expects the number to drop in future reports as developers feel the heat from privacy advocates. In addition, Lookout has found an increase of malware being packaged with third party apps in alternative app stores raising concern that field is becoming more fertile for smartphone virus distribution.
[viaLookout]
I’m not sure I understand the charts here.. they look like iphone is growing quicker in both apps and developers. I’m not sure the # of apps is the best measure anyway. Quality over quantity is more important in my book. Hopefully the recent market changes are helping.
Funny. Quantity always seems to be the best measure with the Apple crowd until they are no longer in the lead. 9 times out of 10 what has been the battle cry from the Apple folks? “We have more apps”. When anyone pointed out a crap load of those apps are sound boards and fart apps its dismissed. Now when someone says oh look…Android is going to have more apps soundboards and fart apps all of a sudden become an issue.
There is no way to judge quality unless you’re going to actually line up all the apps from each and go down the line. On top of that its subjective. One person may not care if the app looks like stock widgets on a black screen because it does everything they need it to do. Another person may say I can’t stand looking at it so its crap. So which person is right? All we can do is count the apps.
Now I will say I do not understand the line on the chart either. It doesn’t appear to make any sense.
Hahaha…. Statistics is the science of presenting lies as truth… In the mentioned timeframe, the Apple store grew with more than 100.000 new apps. Android Market does not even have 100.000 apps. How can you conclude that Andropid Market is on pace to outperform the Apple store? Only with a lot of creative thinking…
Please do homework before you post. http://phandroid.com/2011/02/15/android-market-150k-apps-tripled-in-9-months/
And remember this is ONLY for apps within the Google Market place, not all of the other Android App stores!
Check: http://www.androlib.com/appstats.aspx to have your mind blown a bit.
Quantity is not Quality
True, but it is funny how when this was an Apple marketing point, it was relevant.
Whenever an iFool starts talking about quality over quantity its a signal that they expect Apple to take the back seat.
Am I seeing that Trend Line wrong? It clearly shows either a) the wrong number of apps, within the Android market place, are being indicated as of 2-14-2011 or b) that the # iOS apps are rising more sharply than those of Android.
I say (A), because the number stated by Schmidt was around 150,000 Android apps and this chart indicates less than 100,000.