At the most recent Mobile World Congress, Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed that the company’s partners are now selling over 60,000 Android handsets on a daily basis. With that kind of growth rate, it’s no wonder that the size of the Android Market is quickly increasing in its slipstream.
While Google doesn’t publicly show how many applications there are in Android Market, a Google representative this morning informed me that the application store now serves approximately 30,000 free and paid apps in total.
The application store for Android devices supposedly hit the 10,000 apps milestone in September 2009 according to third-party developer AndroLib, who later also claimed that number doubled in just over 3 months.
Google at the time matched these claimed stats against its own count, and said there were in reality some 16,000 apps in Android Market in December 2009. Yesterday, I asked Google for an update to those internal stats after I noticed AndroLib currently pegs the number of apps at nearly 35,000, and this morning the company got back to me saying there are now officially 30,000 apps in the Android Market. In other words, Google says the number grew from 16k to 30k apps in exactly three months.
The company declines to detail what percentage of apps in Android Market are paid versus free, but for what it’s worth, AndroLib says the ratio is about 39% paid vs. 61% free of charge.
Just for comparison’ sake: Apple counted over 140,000 apps in the App Store in January 2010, so it’s safe to assume there should be about 5 times as many apps for the iPhone and iPod touch as there are for Android devices right about now.
Research agency research2guidance recently released a report forecasting that the total app download market could grow to a whopping $15 billion by 2013.
But the Market website is horrible.
Oh yes it is.
At least there is a website. People considering an iPhone are out of luck when it comes to looking at what apps are on that platform.
Although things are getting better with the web preview pages – e.g.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/skype/id304878510?mt=8
So Robin. What kind of phone is in your pocket? So we know what your bias is.
I have an iPhone 3GS and getting a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 (Android) later this week.
I don’t get you John_mith, You say “at least there is a website” in reply to the crappy Android marketplace website comment, then you’re refuted by Robin (kindly I might add) with a link to a web site preview of the Skype app in the web based preview version of the Apple app store, then you come off smugly assume he has bias by what phone is in his pocket. Seems YOU’RE the one with bias here, not anyone else.
Not to mention that on android, you don’t need to jailbreak your phone just to have an external apps like that adult-related app: Mikandi… You just download it with ease.. :D
On the other hand, why is that when a report like this arrives we always hear the word. Android = quality, Apple App = Quantity.. Is this just a BS or not?
I have a Droid in my pocket, but through iTunes people can see a preview of the platform’s applications, verse having to use a third party such as AndroLib for the Android platform.
The iTunes App Store has a web page as well. iTunes not required.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/mobile-software-applications/id36?mt=8
I can’t seem to search for a specific app?
Agreed. Therefore many Android users use http://www.appbrain.com to find great apps.
Also cyrket
http://www.cyrket.com/
Appstore HQ
http://www.appstorehq.com/android-apps
Unfortunately none of them allow sorting by date to find the latest apps.
You can find the latest apps on AppBrain too:
http://www.appbrain.com/browse/apps/?apps=latest
Also each category allows sorting by date.
Very nice, thank you! I’ll be using it a lot.
droid marketplace is such a let down, use RawApps.com
great news for android..
Usual techcruch’s advertising … it’s incredible the difference between techcrunch with its android love and the other news tech sites / bloggers…
Who cares about android. All the apps are “skins” for your phone which is fun for about three hours.
IPhone has apps that you can use for months or years.
Like Google Voice and Google Goggles. Love those iPhones apps.
But with my Nokia smartphone I can use lots of good apps all at the same time… for example read news during a skype call… tell me, when you expect to do do it in your Iphone??
Can you please enlighten me as to what those iphone apps are?
Oh yes. Those are the one’s Apple would not let into their walled garden. They are really cool.
Voice allows you to place and receive calls from a second virtual number and translates your voicemail to text.
Goggles allows you to search for items using the phone’s camera. And it works quite well.
Don’t listen to this troll (John_mith, and his alter ego john_mith) — Voice, is google’s front end for google voice, which they now use via a web app, yes, Apple has not approved it yet (and based on the bad blood news between the two companies, probably won’t ever)… but there are plenty of solutions, black swan (installs semi-locally), or even other apps that are not just web apps that have the same function (2nd line by toktomi, or ringcentral, and soon to be skype over 3g, only over wifi for now).
The other app, also by Google, is google goggles – more than likely another apple/google spat causing its delay as well. A similar app you can use if you don’t want to use both platforms is amazon search, it also does search via images.
Pot, Kettle, black?
The iPhone app store is full of PAID crapware. You have to shell out money for useless apps that are only designed to bilk users out of money.
Most of the Android apps are free. If you download them and discover they are crap you can delete them from your device in seconds and you are not out money.
free apps … real joy for developers …
good luck android funs.. go on filling the google pocket
Keep that snark under wraps buddy. What will prevent any of the iPhone apps from being available to Android, especially after developers and advertisers start realizing how many normal, non-fan-boy people are adopting Android on all carriers, on an open phone OS?
I think nothing!
IPhone has a well-deserved head-start in developing apps, but it will not prevent a fall from grace.
Yep, those Google Navigation, Voice, SNES/NES/Gameboy/Genesis emulator, etc apps are all just “skins”. Christ, try to be less of a fool.
Google Navigation is not a skin. It’s a GPS. Free I might ad. Very useful. Love how it shows the building when you arrive (I think it can as you drive, but I didn’t look at it until I was there).
Google Voice is not a “skin” either. Voice mail transcription, free text messaging, cheap international calls, custom greetings, etc.
Wow. What a clueless Apple fan boy.
Skins? Got to love when people post on the Internet and have no clue regarding the Android market.
Android market will grow to be massive in the next few months as “critical mass is now being reached”.
I’ll bet that the Android Market and Apple app store will be tied within the year.
yes the rates in which android grows is way more massive than Apples rate maybe within 2yrs
What annoy me is not all of that 30,000 apps can be successfully installed.
Well. There are different devices. Android Market gives you CHOICE in devices where the iTunes App Store does not.
Just like with regular software not all software will work with different hardware and OS versions. Most of the developers are really good about letting users know which handsets the apps are compatible with.
So you’re saying it’s a good thing that the apps won’t work on all devices, because it’s an issue of choice for the user. I would think the apps should work on all the Android phones, especially if they want them to be successful.
Having them work on one phone and not another, even though they’re both Android phones is a major fail.
Yes. Its a good thing. It means that the Android platform is not watered down for the least common denominator aka “stupid people”.
If you can’t see the hardware and software differences between the phones and can’t read plain English to determine if a program is compatible with your device perhaps you should let Apple manage all of that for you.
what john couldve meant is, googles at a whole different game, the problem occurs in the variations in android versions and hardware, now that allows for variety in what you get (the devices), unlike apple , were theyre stuck ryt now, now google can tailor the devices and developers can tailor he apps !!
“Android Market gives you CHOICE in devices where the iTunes App Store does not. ”
Uh, you say this like it’s some sort of good thing. The iPhone apps just work. Android? Not so much, and this is NOT a good thing. It’s pissing users off.. users that aren’t always tech savvy and probably bought an Android device because it was “like an iPhone.” These are users that might just ditch the device and get an iPhone because of incompatibility issues.
I had Android phones and eventually did ditch the platform, but mostly just because of the absolutely horrid support for internet standard email in Android. (I don’t use Gmail.) If you don’t use gmail, Android royally sucks for internet mail. A quick look at code.google.com/p/android will show you that I’m not alone in thinking that.
I can access my hotmail account through the browser. No problem. Put it as one of my favorites too. So now I can have both if I want them.
Google should adopt a strict deign/style policy like Apple did to/and force some of the bad and poorly designed apps out.
Those over-inflated app numbers always tickle me. I would rather have fare fewer good apps than some sort of grab-bag that I have to sift through to find the good fruit. Ever heard of quality over quantity? It affects your brand, Google; take a hint from Apple.
I would suggest a separate “Evaluation Habitat” where users can evaluate, critique, and grade and graduate apps before they are released into the wild.
Also, Apple, Google; do separate apps for different cities really count as unique apps? Please!
would be really simple to implement this on the download side.
if X people uninstall and say ‘it doesn’t work’ then it disappears for that particular version of the phone unless you specifically enable it.
and author if they know it doesn’t work on a particular platform can say so as a checkbox in advance. right now its just done in the comments and description which is plain stupid.
but easy enough to fix.
I have a iPod Touch 1st Gen and there are a bunch of Apps that I can’t even download. Same goes with people that have 1st and 2nd Gen iPhones that don’t have a compass.
Fragmentation is not just on the Android platform and it isn’t restricted only to screen size and external buttons. Just because all iPhones/iTouches look the same and have the same screen doesn’t make them all the same.
Can’t download Shazam….no mic. So don’t make it sound like all iPhones can use all 120K apps on the app store.
The well written apps work on all approved Android phones(those that actually have a market).
Try appazaar to find the coolest apps! You can find it on the market.
Why does this article say that Google “claimed” their numbers while Apple “counts” their numbers?
Is credibility an issue? Is there a story that this article is implying?
I find this story to really be lacking in content, it doesn’t really say much but I wish it did? Who is the target audience and how are they served by this? I don’t get much from this that I could not get in a tweet.
Are free apps bad? What is the average price of apps? Do they represent good value? Do the programmers have a better chance of being noticed instead of being mired among 140K fart apps?
Is this article about great growth of Android market or that it is not as good as itunes Market in some way. If there is a reason to compare with Apple then do it fully… compare the growth in sales over the same period of time since the app stores went on sale, compare paid apps vs free apps percentage of both.
I would love to know if the apps are any good… what is the percentage of total nuisance apps versus real applications. How many are games? social networking? Utilities? etc
I have an iPhone 3g and am curious about the merits of the other products. I have over 700 apps now, the percentage paid is probably 15 percent, many of those were keepers. 140K apps doesn’t impress me, I can’t evaluate that many or sift through them. But I do like quality when I can find it.
I just don’t get much out of this piece, too many articles seem to be on the tech sites with little content these days.
I suggest you read the article before you comment – it helps.
This comment is unhelpful. Sorry I offended you.
Robin, a part of your audience has just told you that he would prefer more info than this. You could take this constructively (an opportunity to hit a broader market perhaps?).
You could just shake you head, ignore the comment but trying to insult your reader does not seem to serve any purpose.
I’m saying I read half your comment and you were already asking questions that go answered in the post.
If you know any thing about Google you would know that it likes to keep data under wraps, which tends to tick off the press, investors, etc, but I wouldn’t call out the story’s credibility, that doesn’t make logical sense.
Just to be clear. I am not questioning the stories credibilty I was questioning if Google’s credibilty was in question. The article seemed to imply this, but you just gave me more information which is helpful. I didn’t know that Google was unhelpful this way. I do not know much about Google or Android but I am curious.
I just find that too many articles imediately get into the iphone vs android comparison but never go very deep into it. The article told part of the story for half the comparison. I want more info. It doesn’t have to answer all the things I mentioned but it could have gone into more detail.
The fantastical numbers thrown about like a “mine is bigger than yours” competition annoys the shit out of me.
Maybe it is just me, but it seems that software on the internet is increasingly fungible in-line with user adoption. As I mentioned before, what will keep developers from offering any of the apps on all platforms; especially once Adobe, IBM, Motorola, etc. are successful in creating a cross-platform app. solution? I think nothing, but please prove me wrong.
700 apps? Why so many? Do you use them all? Don’t know much about Apple apps, but I think you could get a lot accomplished with far fewer Android apps. A bonus would be you wouldn’t have to settle for AT&T.
the rhino- To answer your question, I have just accumulated many apps over time. I went through a period where I used appsniper back when it didn’t crash all the time to watch for sales and it was helpful for purchasing many games and other things that interested me at a low price or for free. This is because many app sellers try to game the ranking by offering an app for free, zooming up the rankings and then raise their prices. I have been guilty of purchasing apps that I hardly use because I thought I would like it.
Other times I have decided that I really need a good app in a category. Let’s say a task manager – I download all the free ones that seem to have positive reviews or look good. Maybe a few at a decent price point of less than a large coffee. I dedicate a page of my phone to testing them out. And I eventually choose one and stick with it (Pocket Informant is the one that met my needs btw) I uninstall the rest but I still keep them in itunes, updating away… maybe one of these apps will be unseat the current one over time due to a great update.
So 700 is a conservative estimate. Much of which is crap and could be deleted. But who deletes stuff they paid for or got for free and has since gone up in price?
I currently have 5 pages x 16 = 80 apps for just music generating apps. I’m loving them; piano, synths, guitar, bass, drums, sequencers, dj apps, chimes, ocarina, kalimba, harmonica, etc. I see these getting reduced down to 1 page eventually. I only have 5 games on the phone now, most games just don’t get me excited these days. Making my own music does at the moment.
I don’t know if this makes me heavy or typical user or not.
Oh and I am in Canada, so I constantly read about AT&T problems. The iphone is sold on all our major carriers. They all suck in terms of pricing but the coverage is fine for 3G. I have another year on my iphone (minimum 3 yr contract here) and am certainly open to Android or Win7 or iphone again, when it comes due. I will compare all of them. I like my iphone but I will never carry a torch for any product.
Google “claims” numbers because it keeps rising. With an open market (thank you Freedom) it’s growing all the time (as the article said). Apple, being a closed market, can give you an exact number (which, sadly, doesn’t grow fast enough for some).
@Pete……that comment was totally redundant….can you even install a thousand apps on your phone? Or you probably don’t own an android….maybe you just echoing one of the ‘hearsays’ around (like the fragmentation crap) the web.
For most average Andoid phones (even with Cupcake)….you can quasi-successfully install 19 out of 20 apps you come across on the market. At the rate the Android market is growing…..who cares abt the 140,000 (with half useless anyway) on Apple’s market.
iPhone critics are always slamming the number of apps as being half crap. They tend to forget that the same can be said for the Android apps as well.
A close friend has a Droid and I was looking through the app store on it and half of them were useless, just like the iPhone’s.
Do they count e-books? Publishers are cranking these out (Oreilly, etc) and they are not apps by any means. I recognize that they are on both iphone and android, but neither should be counting them as apps.
They are published as apps, therefore they are apps. The only way to get around things like that would be to have someone sit down and manually count out all 30,000 apps(by which time there would be more to count).
Pucker up, how does Google’s ass taste?
A good question for Michael Arrington, I believe he was one of the first to come out-of-the-closet and publicly admit to fondling an Android. It’s a scary world we live in now with the pervasive public Android loving…
Awesome, but it doesn’t matter.
Paid apps are only available in what 12 countries? And what < 256MB for app storage?
And it's fragmentation
Google needs to address these issues now, before it's too late.
Are you a trolling or being serious? I seriously can’t tell. The internal ROM is only for the core executable, all resources are stored on SD card. I have over 75 apps (including many games with a lot of resources) and I have only used about 80mb of my internal storage.
As for the paid app issue, at least there is a higher proportion of free to paid apps in the Android market than any other.
Fragmentation is just pure rubbish. 95% of apps work on all flavours of Android from 1.5+, and that’d probably increase to 99% for 1.6+. The ADK maks it uper easy to make backwards compatible apps. That tiny fraction of developers need to get out of the linear development mindset and start coding dynamically.
Google always puts out the newest version of Android, it is up to the carriers and OEMs to put it on their device. If they want sales in a quickly growing market, they’ll have to provide the best service, and that means getting hte latest version of Android on their devices.
And still not even one decent game
Oh really?
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/28/50-android-games-demonstrated-in-one-video-who-says-android-c/
Great news. Google really needs to improve the marketplace app though. Their “featured” apps change maybe once a month, and top downloaded apps are always the same because that’s what people look at and just download more of them, even if they’re awful. It’s really hard to discover new apps, other than searching for keywords, but that often doesn’t yield the best results either.
iPhone app store is way better, Apple updates it every single day.
Now don’t get me wrong here! I hvae a Droid and I *love* it, but I used to have an iPhone, and the app store experience is one place where Apple is kicking Android’s ass. But everything else about Android is superior :)
Too bad 29,900 of them are duplicates of other apps, useless apps that do nothing but show you ads when someone calls you, still images of bikini clad and naked women, and crappy games that could have been on my old voyager.
They love to talk numbers but the majority of those apps are garbage…I check the market daily to see if anything new (actually new and actually useful) came out and I’m usually disappointed.
The only happiness I ever seem to get in the market is when something i already have is updated…and that’s usually just in the hopes that it fixes issues.
Apple may iron fist their app store….but I’ll tell you what there are a LOT more useful apps and they all work (even if some don’t work well).
Some of those games are now FREE. I had the demos free (4 of them at that) on my ENV2. Now I have 5 full free games on my droid.
Um if you read the comments above not all aps work. If you have an old iphone or ipod. So they’re not all useful to everyone. You have to buy the latest and greatst hardware (sad for the consumer when they have time left on their contract).
Robin, I am admittedly more in the Apple camp (I own two iPod Touches, getting an iPad) than the Android camp specifically because I want stuff that just works and I believe that Apple delivers a better overall user experience, and am very happy with the caliber of apps and how seamless the App Store model is (both from a developer and consumer perspective).
The one piece of the story that is always missing from Android Platform talk is which apps people love, are getting used a lot, etc., and which application segments Android is capturing developer mindshare.
I just don’t know, and am a simpleton in the sense that I believe that he who wins the hearts and minds of developers, wins the war.
Apple, for example, has done a great job cultivating the casual gaming segment (Pocket God, Tap Tap Revenge, Madden, NBA Live), and of course this all piggybacks on the goodness of the iTunes depth/breadth so it’s relatively easy to point to developers big and small, downloads, revenue models.
I am just in the dark on Android? Where is the traction on the developer/apps side beyond Google Apps?
Mark
> he who wins the hearts and minds of developers, wins the war.
Have you not noticed all of the developer backlash and horror stories about making apps for the iPhone? Apple is doing anything BUT making developers happy.
I actually think the developer backlash is completely over-stated. There are something like 70K developers. If even a tiny percentage grumble that is a lot of noise.
To be clear, I am not saying that Apple’s approach is perfect. Far from it. I am just looking at what’s getting built, and the flow through to downloads and dollars.
I speak to very few developers who see the grass being greener elsewhere, even as they complain about the weeds on their lawn.
That said, the market is best served any time there are multiple viable alternatives for developers and consumers so I am an advocate of that.
Mark
One of the biggest pitfalls of Android Market is that it currently doesn’t support developers from many countries such as India, Russia etc. to sell applications. This discourages many developers from working on Android platform. Google should allow developers from these countries to sell applications — this will significantly boost the number and variety of apps developed for Android.
Developers from India, Russia, etc. already have apps on the Market.
Often, they make simple apps or simple clones of existing apps and offer them for FREE, only to update them with ads later on.
iPhone developers will skip Android because the user base is smaller and poorer (or want everything for free). With less investment, the market will fill with unsupported ad-driven ‘craplets’.
I once wailed against the iTunes App Store.
Til I visited the Android Market.
There may be 30,000 apps but most of those are clocks, themes, soundboards and there are very few useful apps. Android is a really good platform and it’s only going to evolve and get better. It’s still early and there are not a lot of quality developers making great apps. Only time will tell, but I love my mytouch and wouldn’t go back to the iphone.
If you took time to read the comments you could find very useful aps in the Android market. But instead you post something unintelligent. Thanks. I needed a good laugh.
Actually, there are 196,000+ apps in the iTunes Apps store for the iPhone, iPod, iPad platform.
Thus, 30,000 Android Apps is a fairly distant second.
But they don’t work with ALL the iphones and ipods out there (old ones… how are you going to do Skype or phone-to-phone [new 4g iphone] with an ipod?)… and the iphone apps do NOT work with the iPad, etc., etc. So please do a recount and come back and comment.
personally, i’d prefer android apps over iphone; the hardware on new androids are way better.
This is still pretty positive for Android. One of the key advantages Apple had was their critical mass of apps. Now users actually have a strong alternative.
anybody knows how many of these are paid apps?
About 60% free, 40% paid, or thereabouts. Plus or minus 5% each way.
As many people have said, Android market suffers from being spammed by plenty of useless apps. So the good apps are really hard to find. If an application is released, it appears at the top of the latest app chart, but within an hour, it has been pushed down by Wallpapers, quotes apps, image viewers….
Regarding the monetisation on Android, I think it is due to several factors :
- discoverability on the Android market
- paid apps not available everywhere
- plenty of free apps that give the illusion that everything should be free
- Android has not made an impact on the general public yet. It will probably change this year but currently, it is currently more for geeks. And we are generally quite reluctant to spend on software even if the price is cheaper than fast food meal.
I hope Google does realise how the app store has contributed to iPhone success.
Actually the apple app store has NOT contributed to the iPhone success. Fans have. People who HATE at&t will buy an iPhone simply because it’s an iPhone (um… hello…)
I think latest in 2012 the Android Market will have mor Apps than the AppStore from Apple.
Android will be more increasing in future. Especially for low-budget mobile-phones.
i think Its a good thing
I think the Android Market has potential to grow larger than the Apple’s App store, with the gap gradually widening in Androids favor. Android OS is available on countless devices spanning across all major carriers.
I have a Nexus One, I have yet to run across an App that won’t work on my device. I’m sure there are some out there, but it’s a much smaller issue than some people are making it seem to be.
Right and at the same time Google is approving apps left and right, Apple is deleting apps. Apple removed over 5,000 apps a couple of weeks ago. Lots of developers were mad because they had their app removed from something as silly as showing a model in a bikini.
I just want to know is there any android app that similar to Brushes or Layers on ipod touch, if there are any, I will choose an android over ipod
I am an android developer, (check out my app transitMe) and I must say the market is pretty bad for discovery of new apps. It frustrates me that I put 6+ months of work into am app and most people won’t even know it exists. My phone is running on firmware 1.5 and I hear that the market is better with 1.6+ but from what i’ve heard it isn’t much better.
“most people won’t even know it exists”
Advertising. Marketing.
You could learn these things too.
Might help… couldn’t hurt…
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htc desire or iphone which will work best on apps as they sort out the apps mess, I wanted to be able to look at comparisons to sort the rubbish but no chance.
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