A recent report on the growth of app stores was recently released by Appfigures. Numbers in 2014 were explored and analyzed to identify which among the app stores grew in number of apps. The Amazon Appstore, Google Play Store, and the iOS App Store were identified to be the top three app stores in the mobile world today. (Sorry Windows Phone users, Windows Phone Store not included here.)
As expected, the biggest store is for the Android apps. Since there are more Android-powered devices than iPhones and iPads, it’s obvious that the Google Play Store sells more. But it wasn’t always like this. Numbers since 2010 were included, showing the rapid growth of the mobile industry. Notice that since 2010, there are more iOS apps on the App Store compared to the number of Android apps on the Google Play Store. However in 2014, Google finally surpassed Apple in this category.
All three stores show healthy growth. Google ended 2014 with more than 1.43 million apps. Apple closed with 1.21 million only. Trailing behind the two is Amazon with 293,000 apps. The number is very far from Apple and Google but the Amazon App Store saw a 90% increase.
As for the number of app developers, there are more Android app developers compared to the number of iOS developers. There are almost 400k developers putting up their apps on Google Play–the number almost doubled from the previous year. The number of iOS app developers and Amazon app developers also grew but not as significant as with the Android community.
As for the number of apps, there was a 50% growth in all three app stores. Google Play is the one growing more stronger each year although Apple still continues to grow. Android apps doubled from the previous year showing a very significant change.
Here are some more important important findings of the study:
• The number of apps on Business category increased followed by Food & Drink, Lifestyle, Social Network, and Catalogs.
• More than 128k new Business apps were released in the iOS App Store in 2014
• In Android, the fastest growing categories are as follows: Games, Photography, Music, Entertainment
• More developers joined Google in 2014
VIA: Appfigures
