Rest assured that 2010 is going to be a big year for the Android operating system, with many new handsets finding their way to stores around the world (including Google’s own phone) and an increasing number of developers building tools, games and the likes for the fast-growing platform.
One way of noticing that the OS is poised for a big breakthrough at the expense of Windows Mobile, Symbian and other operating systems designed to run on various mobile devices, is the number of applications already available for download in the platform’s own application store, Android Market.
While Google doesn’t disclose publicly how many apps are available for installation, AndroLib has been chronicling the publication of all free and paid apps since Android was introduced, so it’s the closest thing to getting a confirmed number at this point.
Lo and behold, that number hit the 20,000 milestone just moments ago, a little over 5 months since it reached 10,000 apps. And as you can tell from the pie graph below, close to 38% of these apps are paid, while 62% of the apps cost as much as the license fee handset manufacturers need to fork over to Google for use of the Android OS.
This may pale in comparison to the number of applications available for the iPhone / iPod Touch (100,000), but the real battle for mobile OS dominion isn’t fought between Google and Apple, who are increasingly distancing themselves from more established players in terms of mobile Web usage and together are creating a whole new mobile advertising micro-economy.
Evidently, the number of applications available for download are only part of the story, but the numbers AndroLib has collected most certainly indicates that the Android Market is maturing fast. Just look at the growth curve in the first graph and the increasing amount of new applications that are published in Android Market every month in the second.
My guess Android Market will be serving 50,000 apps as early as Q2 2010.
This is cool. and the interesting thing is that more than 50% apps are free. In India, less than 0.5% people will ever buy apps for their phones
That’s still a lot of people ;)
Over 500 Million users at last count…a bit below China
Which is why raw numbers of apps is an utterly pointless statistic.
Robin’s assertion that just because Android will have a certain amount of apps it will cut into Symbian or WinMo’s share is amusing. There are other very good reasons why Android will cut into their market share – although it’s likely to do much more damage to Apple and RIM in the near future – but volume of apps ain’t one.
“one way of noticing” – “only one part of the story”
Except it isn’t, Robin. That’s the point.
@Mark
Even if you don’t find it to be a compelling argument, you really don’t think that being able to toss that number out there to Joe Public looking at a smart phone is relevant?
Apple’s entire ad campaign is built around the number and variety of apps available for the iPhone, doesn’t that suggest something to you?
Sure, it’s a USP that isn’t that unique any more. Now here’s a question for you:
Why do people buy iPhones?
Mark, you’re either missing the point, or maybe hasn’t been paying close attention to this industry..
As Robin pointed, Apps is obviously one part of the story. And a BIG ONE, in fact. It’s by far the most drastic evolution of the past two decades of mobile computing. Of course it’s limited to a small piece of the total industry – the high end devices – but that’s clearly where the profits are. Take a look at this year’s balance sheet of Nokia, Motorola or SonyEricsson and you’ll see what I mean. Now compare that to RIM or Apple..
Will smartphones ever outnumber value phones in the world? Absolutely not. OEMs will sell literally BILLIONS of phones on EMEA, US and BRIC countries over the next couple of years, and just a small fraction will be of smartphones. Still, when you consider that a value phone makes an average profit-per-unit of $10 – compared to 25x more of a smartphone – you can clearly understand why this segment is so relevant in this industry (and not even counting all the positive impact in terms of innovation, brand awareness, etc).
Moving forward, Apps will be a given on any high end device. Those who have it – the iPhone and Android platform – will have a clear USP. Those who don’t – RIM, WinMo, Symbian – will have either to either catch up quickly or will have tough time competing in anything other than value or business/messaging segments.
To get you up-to-speed, three recent articles from NYT: http://bit.ly/4DxFZU, http://bit.ly/6dVyAi and http://bit.ly/4Q7EHW.
Gui,
That’s nice. Now can you point to the research that shows number of apps is instrumental in smartphone sales?
Here’s some other help for you: RIM, Symbian and WinMo all have thousands of apps and app stores too.
You might want to get up to speed yourself. Number of apps is irrelevant as long as the platform supports the hundred or so that people actually use.
We will soon find that Apple will stay at 20% market share in smart phones (even if share of smart phones to total sales will increase) and 60% to Android and remaining will among others.
I have been pushing this stat for a while now… :-)
Who to? Because it’s laughable.
96.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot! :)
Android is at 0.5 % so far (4 % of smartphones), so that’s certainly a brave prediction. Especially after Bada was announced, taking mighty Samsung out of the Android camp. This leaves Android as the OS for the losers (Moto and SE). Consumers generally don’t care for OS’s, they care for the phones. If Android is hanging out with the loser companies, it will remain a loser OS and never get above 10 % market share. We’ll see Android taking the #4 spot among smartphone OS’s from WinMo next year, before Samsung will come in an dump Bada on most of the 10 million touchscreen phones they’re already selling per quarter which will move Android back to #5. From there it will be a fight for survival for Android, WinMo, and WebOS, as the big 4 (iPhone, BB, Bada, Symbian) are splitting up the largest part of the pie amongst themselves.
Tom, the market share is just one of the variables. An App developer doesn’t care how many phones exist out there, but HOW MUCH MONEY THAT PLATFORM COULD MAKE ME. Symbian is the big giant with 40% of worldwide devices, but how much money the Symbian eco-system is generating to its developers? Just a tiny fraction of what the iPhone is generating, even though the iPhone has less than 5% of total sales..
So, unless Samsung can deliver with Bada an user experience attractive enough to bring users AND developers to the platform, it’ll be just yet-another-OS-based-on-Linux. Like the dozens that existed over the past two decades.
I personally don’t believe on a turn-around by Samsung. They may be a giant in manufacturing, but their ability in creating good software is yet to be seen.
Gui, Thank you for your comments. Of course the AppStore is years ahead by several measures: UX, polish, payment solutions, international reach etc, which gives it excellent dynamics among consumers and developers alike. By comparison e.g. Nokia’s Ovi so far has flopped. But there was a smartphone and Java phone software market before the AppStore, and countless developers have existed on it, so I think without hard figures your “tiny fraction” is higly speculative! To get to Samsung (which I’m not enamoured with, it’s just fresh in my memory), at the Bada event in London last week Gameloft said that Samsung users have downloaded more than 100 million Gameloft titles so far. With ASPs presumably higher than on the iPhone, that’s a significant wad of money, don’t you think?
Over the last year, we have heard from several established mobile software developers that the iPhone is the shooting star among their supported platforms, but it was always implied that the other platforms are still going strong. None of them said that they’d drop development for the older platforms. What is different about the AppStore is that it’s far more approachable for developers and therefore has reached a lot more developers that were not in mobile development before (or weren’t even developers before). In terms of overall revenue it is likely not as dominant as that buzz would suggest.
By the way, the iPhone has had a smartphone market share between 10 % and 20 % ever since July 2008 — not less than 5 %, as you suggested.
If Samsung needs a turn-around I don’t know. So far no profit warnings from them. Their touchscreen non-smartphones with Facebook and Flickr integration are apparently selling very well (outselling the iPhone), and this could be a sign of things to come from their direction in 2010. Again, I’m not a fan of Samsung. I just see their move towards Bada as a watershed moment for Android.
Pushing a stat? On what basis please? Number shmunmber until you produce some valid rational reasoning.
Important info the market needs:
1. Number of apps- is OK but there are 100,000 WM apps…so what?
2. Total market value for apps per platform (this is most important for developers like us who want to make money NOW). And istore massively ahead in this respect.
3. Likelihood to purchase by manufacturer and handset (this is the most important piece of information to judge the future market development)
4. Volume of handsets, which can purchase apps, by manufacturer.
So- thanks for the first stat. But number of apps means little as WM app stores show.
Regarding the pusher of ’stats’ above; what’s going to happen when 1. Apple bring in cheaper models 2. launch on multiple platforms.
We’ve got used to a market with lots of phones- why shouldn’t the future be a small number of phones- with differentiation happening through software and apps. Seems to be a market ripe for consolidation- both of manufacturers and most importantly, models.
This is happening already- try to spot the outward difference between top 10 smartphones- they all look the same! So no reason why, if Apples’s product continues to be better and more popular for the next year or two, they won’t come to hugely dominate the market. Over 50% smartphones- why not?
And in the future- all phones will be smartphones. So Nokia is in deep doodoo if it doesn’t raise its game.
Dan, while I do generally agree that Apple could start grabbing market share anytime now, growing to 10 % of the overall phone market within very few years, I don’t think the carriers would allow Apple to grow beyond 50 %. If Apple gets anywhere near that line, they will start giving preferential treatment to the competition, the same way Hollywood and the music industry are treating iTunes right now.
To predict the smartphone market is quite speculative now, because we don’t know what will be a smartphone next year. If the big-volume companies LG, Samsung and Nokia turned all their x00 million mid-market feature phones into smartphones, the shares will look completely different by the end of next year. Apple could lower their entry price from $499 to $299 if they wanted to, but the others could go even lower, they’re actually already there.
“Symbian is the big giant with 40% of worldwide devices, but how much money the Symbian eco-system is generating to its developers? Just a tiny fraction of what the iPhone is generating, even though the iPhone has less than 5% of total sales..”
And, of course, you have numbers to back that up don’t you?
Oh wait.
Here’s some facts for you armchair analysts. Nokia Ovi, rubbish as it was at launch, has improved substantially although it’s got a way to go. Currently it serves a million downloads a day with 50% growth per month. In addition, Nokia have been working hard to secure the low and mid tier smartphone market – which is where the long term stability is – and sales are up Y on Y in the last two quarters (is it churlish to point out that Nokia – who don’t have a real presence in the US -actually increased their smartphone sales by more than the iPhone sold in total outside the US in Q2 2009? Probably, but what the hell, right?).
If you seriously think that the smartphone market is going to be dominated by devices costing £200 on two year contracts at £35 a month your insane. That’s the difference.
Mark A,
“Here’s some facts for you armchair analysts.”
Look at yourself, posting rants on this gadget fansite…
“(is it churlish to point out that Nokia – who don’t have a real presence in the US -actually increased their smartphone sales by more than the iPhone sold in total outside the US in Q2 2009? Probably, but what the hell, right?)”
Picking stats could indeed be called churlish.
Nokia were indeed up 3 million units in 2Q09, but they were also DOWN 3 million units in 4Q08, with little growth in 1Q09 and 3Q09. Over the last 12 months (4Q08-3Q09) they were up 1.1 million units. Apple were up 11.2 million in the same time frame (all Gartner’s figures).
And I’m not asking you to take China out of Nokia’s sales because Apple wasn’t selling in China in Q2 2009. ;-)
“Nokia Ovi, rubbish as it was at launch, has improved substantially although it’s got a way to go. Currently it serves a million downloads a day with 50% growth per month.”
Actually, Nokia said (paraphrasing) “just under one million per day, growing 100 % month-on-month”. Not to discount Nokia’s galactic customer base, but I find these stats too unspecific to be reliable. I expect bigger things from them in 2010, followed by more meaningful stats. Right now most of the Symbian app business will still be outside of Ovi.
“If you seriously think that the smartphone market is going to be dominated by devices costing £200 on two year contracts at £35 a month your insane. That’s the difference.”
That sounds a lot like Steve Ballmer in 2007, calling the iPhone “the most expensive phone in the world”. It’s a red herring. Of course pricedrops are required by any smartphone manufacturer who wants to go mid-market and low-end. Since Apple have the highest margins now, they would have big leverage in that regard. If they don’t want to drop price, well that’s their problem. But which strategy Apple is going to follow is not written in stone. Some look at the Mac, some look at the iPod for precedence.
Just by the way, in the UK the iPhone 3G is free on a £34 contract.
Of course, Indians are not allowed to enter the Android Market. It is currently limited to 11 countries, and in 10 of those, the selection is noticeably smaller than 20.000 apps.
Wonder has Molinker paid their $25 yet for the Android store.
Don’t forget also that in some countries it is IMPOSSIBLE to buy an app on iPhone if you don’t have a physical adress or bank account in europe or US. It is the case for example in most countries of Africa, Indian Ocean and Asia. So Droid is for sure the coming market. 2010 will be DROID ;)
and google phone ;)
I’m confused whether you are talking about the Motorola Droid or the Google Android operating system. Please don’t refer to Android as Droid as they are two completely separate things.
@Steve
While I agree with you in principle. Actually Droid runs Android. So, in some instances it can be used to mean the same thing. If it runs on Android it’s by default going to run on your Droid.
Agreed though… Droid is a physical phone while Android is the OS running on it.
no the droid runs android the droid is just the name the operating system is android 2.0
Droid is Verizon’s brand for a line of phones, so far coming for HTC and Motorola.
This is great news. Even though google needs to work hard on the market itself, since it is quite crap when it comes to exposure, design, functionality.
Android market is woefull I have never come accross such an unorganised website.
agreed, the android market needs to be completely reworked to account for the variety of devices, screen resolutions, etc. In its current state there’s no way to tell if an app was coded for your device’s resolution, it hurts developers and end users. It is also riddled with buggy apps. I would support some sort of QA process for the store, there’s gotta be a good medium between apple’s too-strict process and android’s non-existent one. I love my new droid and want to start getting into app development, but the market is disappointing.
The reason I dislike the android market website is as follows.
No Ability to download a said app you like on the android market website and then be able to manually install, becasue theres no download button.
No ability to search for apps.
No ability to see the latest apps.
No ability to view apps in any order.
No reviews for the apps from other users.
I have no idea If an app would work for my HTC Hero.
That is just some of my gripes
You can do all that on the Android market app itself, but agreed, it would be nice if the market website had all the features of the market app.
While the android market definitely needs work to address multiple devices and versions I find this post just plain wrong. I’ve personally downloaded over 100 apps…
-The search functionality is keyword… easy, fast and accurate just as you’d expect from google.
-”Just in” shows you the latest apps in each category
-Reviews and comments galore… good and bad as this is feedback is exactly where my device, version comment comes from.
relevant post: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/15/android-market-app-store/
“In its current state there’s no way to tell if an app was coded for your device’s resolution, it hurts developers and end users. It is also riddled with buggy apps.”
This is because if designed properly Android apps don’t care about resolution, only screen size. These are unrelated properties. Games, as always, are an edge case. Developers can cause their app to be filtered based on physical screen size and any failure to do so is theirs, not Android Market’s.
The website is useless, but the mobile app is good.
62% free (??) .. not so cool …
seems to confirm that it will be difficult to make some profit..
Not really, you just need to have an app that people are prepared to pay for. How is that different from any other store?
I think 62% total free apps is quite low.
If every paid app also has a free try-before-buy version, then at least 50% of apps must be free.
I guess it will be the same as on iPhone. 1 % will make a profit, the rest will not.
比起iphone 还是少啊
This ratio is too much compare to other mobile application in market…….
Unfortunately for the Android Market, there seems to be just as many garbageware apps for Android as there are for the Apple App Store. The fact that most of them are free does kind of make up for it. That makes it difficult to get a profit, though.
One thing that I do find interesting is that some of these apps in the Market become redundant if you have an HTC Hero (like me). HTC bundles so many of their widgets and apps with the Hero that you don’t need to download as many apps as you would with, say, a Droid.
Sounds like we need some way of searching for good apps; shame that Android’s publishers don’t know anything about that.
Oh, wait…
How Skype is still not available in full on Android is a mystery to me- what are they waiting for?
Userbase. So far less than 5 million Android phones are in use.
The biggest problem Google have with the Android Market at the moment is that paid apps are only available in about 6 countries.
Users here in Sweden where I live have been complaining for more than 6 months trying to find out when paid apps will be available but Google are staying tight lipped and won’t say anything.
The only country I have seen added since the initial launch countries is Switzerland. Perhaps Google really meant to add Sweden but made the usual faux pas that most Americans make ;-)
Totally agree with you Steve. I want to buy apps, but because of living in Belgium I have no access to the paying part of the market.
I’ve had a Google Checkout account since the very begining. Why on earth can’t I use it to pay for apps?
We don’t even have the right to install the Youtube app in Belgium.
This results in a very negative and frustrating experience, and worst of it, proves that net neutrality does not exist when talking Android.
Country limitations linked to mobile phones and Internet suck.
It’s worse than that. Not only you can’t buy, you can’t even sell your apps unless google decides to expand their checkout system. I quit building a game because of that.
Will they have the toilet app? Damn Larry David stole my idea.
my friend is working on one just for you Sara ;)
If they are any good… then a few hundred would be enough! No proper Vid player without conversion, no proper PDF reader that reflows well, no effecient PIM apps… 20000, pssst! Well least it’s not 100,000 crappy apps like how another company boast!
I don’t a few hundred would be enough. While everyone agrees that they’d need just a few good apps, it soon turns out that not everybody is thinking about the same apps. Me e.g., I would not be interested in the 3 apps you asked for.
Its just a number to boast off!
The apple and android market has to seriously kick out fraudulent and useless silly apps.
I feel that is the biggest favor they could do for its consumers.
Can anyone extrapolate from this data? That curve looks so smooth. estimate of when 100k, 200k etC?
I’d like to see this too (I’m too lazy).
Well, a very rough calculation, taking rough figures from the graph and assuming exponential growth (always a risky assumption) gives:
100,000 apps around August 2010
200,000 apps around November 2010
and
747,349,959 by 1st January 2015, but you may find it difficult to find stuff.
By 2020 the entire population of earth will be required to write apps for the Google store.
(221,500,091,763,684 apps).
So use these figures with care.
It is not the number of apps that matter; but rather the quality and uniqueness…
In Apple’s app store, there are at least 15-20 apps for each idea (except the franchise games)… so the 100,000 mark actually comes down to maybe 5000 unique apps.
…and then obviously 15 apps for the same idea mean more competition and better apps.
There are a few immediate bugs with the Droid.
1. GPS in some phones because of the phone number and the network on Verizon have been reported to be a mile off.
2. There’s no stop button on the music player! Only a pause.
——-
Droid does… but in moderation. 1st generation products time and time again have flaws in coding, organization and regulation of apps, and usability.
I wish Droid had a zoom in feature comperable to the iPhone. Instead, Droid has a simple “+” and “-” button tha magnifies to one size only and that size is still too small for my weary eyes to read.
Thank Apple’s multitouch pattern for not letting everyone else zoom in and out with a 2 finger gesture.
Damn patents.
Actually Apple doesnt own the patent for the pinch zoom multi-touch gesture (PARC might have) – all multi-touch systems should be able to support that.
Yeah, I think it’s more of a patent agreement with Google.
Are you sure you configured your droid correctly? I’ve never had any issues with my GPS and I use it to track my runs with Cardio Trainer. One mile off on a six mile run would be fairly evident, don’t you think? Stick to satellite-based GPS and you can’t go wrong.
With regard to the screen magnification, you can set it do default zoom to whatever level you like and then use the +/- to tweak to any level beyond that. But multi-touch is just a firmware update away. I’ve had my Droid for a month and it already updated itself to 2.0.1, so just be patient. Google maps has been updated more times than I can count, so you know you are dealing with a competent development team. That’s more than I can say for WinMo.
“[..] while 62% of the apps cost as much as the license fee handset manufacturers need to fork over to Google for use of the Android OS.”
And… how much is that?
oh come on! :)
fail
Same amount of money you are paying to Arrington to post your comment ;-)
Awesome, 20000 and counting!
Anyway to compare with the apple app store? I would be curious to see where apple was at this stage in their app store.
I’m sure the App Store had a whole lot more, considering that the Android Market only opened 3 months after the App Store.
I don’t know why people continue to think that the App Store has such a big head start. They didn’t.
I think Google did a very smart move pushing the Android market, the real power of the iPhone is the app store not the device itself.
But… (you knew it would come)
The app store serves a few device (3 iPhones & iPods) so the 100,000 apps work on most of them
the Android market serves an endless list of phone from many manufactures & out of the 20,000 only a few work n each phone.
To date it is impossible to know what app from the Android market runs properly on what phone.
I think & hope that the highly expected Nexus one will help Google clean up the mess.
I know the Android will knock the iPhone & Apple from the top only question is when.
“only a few work n each phone”
utter BS, it’s very rare that an app doesn’t work on each phone, except shortly after launch when additional fixes are added if needed.
The amount of issues is also very dependent on the phone itself – mostly it’s happened where there have been new Android versions (1.5, 1.6, 2.0) – but all phones will eventually be upgraded to these (at least for now, I expect eventually the oldest phones will no longer work with the latest Android version at some point in the future, but I’m speculating).
Actually, I haven’t found a single app that doesn’t work on my HTC Hero (1.5).
Fragmentation is a big issue and it will only get worse for Android as it spreads to more and more handset vendors. Ask the Symbian folks – they have been thru that already and its not pleasant at all. That is why S60 is getting replaced by Qt. Fragmentation can literally bring any App Store to its knees.
Apple would face the same issue if they branched out too much – thats why they haughtily stick to single digit numbers of platforms and follow the high cost/low volume strategy for selling their devices.
Name 5 apps that don’t work on every phone.
actually most apps will work for most phones like some else said thats B.S. its rare for a app to not work on all android phones
Some constructive criticism Robin (and only because you are the worst offender):
Please use the word “amount” only for stuff you cannot count. For things you *can* count, use “number”.
So instead of
“…and an increasing amount of developers building tools,…”
please say:
“…and an increasing number of developers building tools,…”
The first time I ignored it. The 3,467th time I just had to comment :-)
Thanks!
Peace.
Someone should make an app for that!
check out my fan android commercial in HD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8CqMVa6ZeU
Thanks prash, should be fixed.
Wow, technology information and gramer lessons. What a site! Maybe we can learn about spelling too ;-)
It looks like you’ve already got spelling nailed.
yes, grammar is misspelled intentionally.
I wonder if the trend towards free apps is growing. For me that’s a good thing. Advertising and freemium apps are more likely to generate revenue on android than on the iphone, as it’s users are not “conditioned-by-itunes”
Excellent point. Many people seem to forget that there are plenty of cash-positive business models for software that are not driven by sales revenues alone. Some of the best apps on my phone are free but contain a small, unobtrusive ad at the bottom. I would much rather see an ad like that, than have my tv or hulu viewing interrupted by an annoying 30 sec snippet, or three.
The Android Market will be serving 50,000 apps as early as Q2 2010 is a really conservative estimated. There will be more Android devices in 2010 than all the iPhones ever sold. Based on that alone I expect the demand for Android apps will grow faster than iPhone apps. I also expect Android deployments in the Enterprise to explode with the availability of more Android devices….
Thats very good. Keep going Google!
Also test drive Android OS 2.0 Emulator on Windows.
http://www.zjtechlive.com/try-android-2-0-on-your-windows/
It’s amazing how the number of apps became a new p**ssing contest. It looks like a bubble to me, just like the number of dotcoms back in the days.
Most of the apps are ad delivery mechanisms.
well said…
As cool as Google is, I just can’t see it eating into Apple’s market share. Now, I will be interested to see how the YouTube integration is with the Android phone (hopefully better than the iPhone).
YouTube comes with the phone. And android can definitely eat into Apple’s market share – if Android didn’t exist, I’d have an iPhone
yo quiero ver algo soy lizeth
A market without search and a Google Talk app without the talk feature.
I completely agree on Google Talk, I have no idea what it would take to implement that, but I was really shocked that feature isn’t there yet.
Maybe because the carriers don’t like it.
I’ll stay with the iPhone if they unlock the phone, if not I’ll check out the Droid.
AAPL is funny, they’re doing the same thing w/ the smartphone as they did with the pc.
First to market, close the environment, watch the PC (droid) kill it.
Maybe, like the pc, they can keep 14% market share and command a 174 billion market cap.
Or, maybe, once smart phone sales are with the more economically efficient model, the market cap drops…
I think they have a dedicated enough cult to keep sales going…
What’s so funny when the profit made from their PC business blitzes every other company bar HP? When they could easily buy Dell just with the cash they have in the bank right now? That sounds like a successful strategy, doesn’t it?
What about RIM, Samsung and Nokia? Will they just fall by the wayside because they don’t fit into your understanding of computer history? Android is still the underdog in this race. The moment Samsung released their own OS it was clear that the market would not adopt Android as an industry standard.
what economically efficient model? please explain. If you mean licensing- then please explain how that is more efficient.
With the volumes Apple are doing now on iPhone- it’s going to be very difficult for anyone to be more efficient than them. Once you’re building millions of something- there’s only so much more efficiency.
Further I just see Google copying Apple not doing something different. Just watch them make a Google Phone…that’s where they’re going to invest their efforts because you can’t leave the overall user experience to other companies.
Furthermore, user experience is MUCH MUCH more important on a phone than a PC. Plug and play accessories/spares which was key factor in success of the PC is not an issue.
Not happy about it but see everything leaning towards continued Apple dominance in this market.
In reply to Darren- true- but it’s not their PC/MAC business which makes the most money. It’s their small devices (although both growing healthily).
Can see the manufacturers using Google as interim solution for a year or two- but even then the Android platform is still not there. So why shouldn’t the handset manufacturers control their own future and build their own app stores & s/w. They’re ALL big enough. No one wants to lose our to Google the way the IBM conceded to Microsoft- the way, leads certain death/low margins.
How many of the 20,000 are Fart Apps and Tip Calculators…? ;-)
Android:
50 results for fart apps.
47 results for tip calculators.
anyone with a android phone can make the search to verify.
iPhone:
fart apps: most of them.
tip apps: the rest of them.
I think you forgot that Adobe has a Photoshop app on the iPhone. Autodesk, the makers of AutoCAD, have Sketchbook Mobile and Fluid on the iPhone. You can read and edit Microsoft Office files with the Documents To Go and QuickOffice apps. In fact, Microsoft has two apps on the iPhone, Seadragon Mobile and Tag Reader. There are PDF readers, and apps that let you do speech to text (Dragon Dictation). You can store your files online from the iPhone with Dropbox and put files wireless on your iPhone with Air Sharing.
UPS and FedEx, Bank of America, Chase, Paypal, Wells Fargo, Fox Business, Bloomberg, E*Trade, CNN, Yahoo Finance, and Mint.com all have apps for the iPhone.
There are apps that will start your car (Viper), apps that let you control your Mac or PC across the room or across town (Air Mouse, Apple Remote, Mocha VNC). Apps that read bar code labels (Red Laser).
You can get a Black’s Law Dictionary on the App Store. Amazon has a Kindle app. You can get a variety of Scientific Calculators. There are a variety of GPS apps, some free and some not so free.
There are apps that turn your iPhone into a Piano, Drum set, Guitar, and Flute, among many other instruments. There are apps that let you listen and identify songs playing in the grocery store or just about anywhere (Shazam), apps that let you sing like T-Pain and apps that change your voice to sound like Darth Vader, the Chipmunks, a Clown, or Cyborg (Voices).
EA has Madden, Rockband, NBA Live, the Sims 3, Spore, Scrabble, Tetris, Battleship, Dragon’s Liar, Snood, Tiger Woods PGA Tour and 2 versions of Monopoly on the iPhone.
Gameloft has Modern Combat: Sandstorm, Assassin’s Creed, Driver, Hero of Sparta, Brothers in Arms, The Oregon Trail, Terminator Salvation, Skater Nation, Hawx, Castle Magic and EW Jim and a bunch of other games on the iPhone.
Sega has Super Monkey Ball 1 & 2, Sonic the Hedgehog.
There are a variety of gaming companies whose sole purpose is to make games for the iPhone and nothing else (Illusion Studios, Ngmoco, Digital Chocolate).
Other than that there’s 21,589 Games, 19,210 Books, 18,205 Entertainment Apps, 8,478 Travel Apps, 8,322 Educational Apps, 7,986 Utility Apps, 6,950 Lifestyle Apps, 5,174 Reference Apps, 5,151 Sports Apps, 4,567 Music Apps, 3,272 News Apps, 3,192 Productivity Apps, 3,164 Navigation Apps, 2,859 Business Apps, 2,720 Healthcare and Fitness Apps, 2,357 Social Networking Apps, 2,206 Photography Apps, 1,913 Finance Apps, 1,604 Apps and 567 Weather Apps.
But, yeah, other than that, it’s complete crap.
yup, complete crap is correct.
am I wrong to see the battle between Android and Apple’s OS as strikingly similiar to the original battle between Windows and Apple’s OS?
Apple is more of a walled garden whereas the Android is much more open?
Id say apple is more like a fancy modern museum building with a mid-evil circus on the inside. While Android is like a Aids, but instead of dieing you get free candy.
woho free candy!
windows,palm and the rest are cavemen playing with fire for the first time.
Apple is Apple, but why is Android Windows? When Windows came out, MS-DOS already dominated the market (by 30 to 90 %, depending on which version of Windows you think became the first to be relevant). All Microsoft had to do was putting Windows on top of MS-DOS to keep people from moving to the Mac. Instant marketshare for Windows. If Nokia and Samsung had adopted Android as their OS, the situation would be similar today, but that obviously didn’t happen. You can compare Android to OS/2 or GEM if you want, something with small marketshare.
But I don’t see more than 1500 applications in the store right now ????? :(
I have an HTC Hero and can get plenty of porn in crystal clarity maybe its the phone not the software.
I’ve been holding off on getting one of the new-generation phones, in part because I want a good alternative to the iPhone. I’m hoping Android is it.
Try, Meizu M8, the iphone clone that’s based on Windows CE. You’ll be pleasantly surprised!!
test