Google to Claim "World's Biggest App Store" Title From Apple in Five Months

April 27, 2011 at 3:05 pm PT

It was great while it lasted, but Apple’s dominance in the mobile app market is coming to an end. Though it remains by far the leader in sheer app-store tonnage today, Android’s surging growth will soon change that.

According to a new report from analytics outfit Distimo, if Google’s Android Market maintains its current rate of growth it will surpass Apple’s App Store to become the largest app store in number of applications. In fact, it’s already tops in the number of free apps it offers.

“The Apple App Store for iPhone is the largest store in terms of all applications available; however it was among the slowest growing stores in terms of relative growth in March,” Distimo observes in its report. “Regardless of its low relative growth, the Apple App Store for iPhone was still second only to Google in terms of absolute growth figures.”

But falling behind Google’s Android Market growth rate will ultimately cost Apple its “biggest app store” title. Distimo expects the Android Market to have about 40,000 fewer applications than the Apple App Store for iPhone by the end of June 2011, and predicts it will close the remaining gap before the end of July 2011. “If all application stores maintain their current growth pace, approximately five months from now Google Android Market will be the largest store in terms of number of applications, followed by the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, BlackBerry App World and Nokia Ovi Store,” the company projected.

Tagged with: Android, Android Market, App Store, applications, digital, Distimo, iPhone, John Paczkowski

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Anonymous

Do all the Google apps get put on without approval? Just asking?
http://www.kybervision.com William_B

How convenient it is to separate iPhone vs iPad contributions in the AppStore… Nonsense!
Anonymous

yeah, android might have a bunch of apps but really they mostly stink. Besides, Google counts the wallpapers and skins as Apps. Apple will retain the high quality app selection for the long run
Anonymous

Yeah! Google is going to get “The biggest stinky collection of apps in the world” title. I really think that Apple doesn’t matter about that.
http://profiles.google.com/joshpritchard Joshua Pritchard

End July 2011 is 3 months away, not 5.
http://www.isights.org/ Michael Long

And just how many of those apps are complete ripoffs? Do a search on a common app name in the Android Marketplace, and see how many results you come up with.

Hey! I can copy a file. Perhaps I should be an Android app “developer”.
http://profiles.google.com/stefanyoungs1945 Stefan Youngs

I think we’re all getting more than a little tired of this ‘analyst’ nonsense about how great Android is already and how it’s going to eat Apple’s lunch in every category. And even more tired at journalists’ willingness to peddle this drivel without doing even a minimum of due diligence.

Android is a slew of free software given away by Google to ANYONE who wants it, without control, oversight or even recording who has got it. For why? So Google can pollute the mobile space 24/7 with ad crap. If there will be less than a dozen different application stores for android devices (all incompatible) I will be surprised.

You could have a gazillion devices running this stuff and still not be in the same league as Apple’s iOS eco-system.
Anonymous

Idiotic: the inclusion of “analysis” of relative growth stats.

If you start with 1 app and go to 2 apps you have “100 PERCENT” relative growth!!! (cue hyperventilation) If, on the other hand you start with 300,000 apps and go to 400,000 apps you have a miserable 33 1/3 percent growth rate. (cue sad face). Anyone with a pulse recognizes that relative growth numbers penalize a large installed base in favor of peewees and tell you nothing.
http://twitter.com/james_alley James Alley

That’s pretty speculative. I don’t draw the same conclusion from the provided chart.
redchou

- iPhone App are made for Small screen sized device.
- iPad App for bigger screen device.
- When you compare the number of iPad App and Honeycomb/Android Tab App, the iPad win. That’s where it’s become convenient.
redchou

Yes, You can launch an App without any Google approval.
(if it was your question).
http://profiles.google.com/stefanyoungs1945 Stefan Youngs

Yes.. that’s just one reason for the large number (who knows how many?) of virus and malware delivering apps. And hence the number of anti-virus apps. By comparison, count the number of anti-virus apps on Apple’s AppStore..
Anonymous

My analysis says “no they’er not”! And I state firmly that I am a reliable source. So there!
http://www.isights.org/ Michael Long

See what happens to Apple’s App Store when you combine iPhone and iPad apps into a single line…
http://www.kybervision.com William_B

Most iPad apps also run on the iPhone & iPod touch, so the distinction is even less valid…
Anonymous

The Amazon installer only has 3,000 apps because the rest were too crap even for Amazon to sell. There are tens of thousands of ring tones in Android Market being counted as apps. And even the best Android apps are still Java applets, not native apps as on the Apple platforms.
$330AShareMakesMeWeep>8.-.(..

Pundits love to build these trend lines that if a line is steep enough it will eventually cross all the other lines at some future point in time. Unfortunately nearly all lines level off at some point and nobody knows exactly when. Still, these growth lines don’t show anything about financial value. If at some point, Android does surpass iOS in the number of apps, Apple will still be making the most money from their App Store by a longshot.
Anonymous

More than 75% of iPad users do not have an iPhone. Yes, we count the apps separate. App Store is divided into iPad and iPhone sections.

There are 2 kinds of apps, no matter what platform you are talking about, could be iOS, could be Android, could be World Wide Web:

* made for a full-size screen (10 inches and up) which Apple calls “iPad,” Android calls “tablet,” and the Web calls “desktop”
* made for a pocket screen (3-4 inches) which Apple calls “iPhone,” Android calls “phone,” and the Web calls “mobile”

Some apps run only at full-size, some apps run only at pocket size, some apps run at both sizes. A key thing is that users don’t like to run the pocket apps at 2x. It wastes the screen. An app with a full-size interface will be preferred even if it has less functionality.

There are plenty of iPad apps that don’t run on iPhone. Some iPad apps are ported from the PC or game consoles and do not have smaller interfaces, some iPad apps started on iPad because it gave developers a way to stand out amongst the large number of existing iPhone apps. I have an iPad and an iPhone and there is a different set of apps on each.

So Android tablets really will have to develop their own app platforms. Otherwise, the users don’t get the benefit of the large screen. They don’t get a PC class experience if they are running phone apps at 2x. If you only run phone apps, you might as well just use a phone.
http://www.kybervision.com William_B

This is irrelevant in terms of ecosystem (the focus of the Distimo report)… The iPhone, iPod touch and iPad are part of the same ecosystem!
http://www.sk1wbw.wordpress.com Wayne Williams

It has more FREE apps? Wow, color me impressed.
Anonymous

With its free (malware)-for-all mindset “Google’s World’s Biggest…” reads as flabby-big, not muscular-big like Apple’s lean, curated App Store.

I would have been shocked if google DIDN’T pass the App Store in their app numbers; anything that is always hand selected and scrutinized is about quality, not dross.
http://www.marcelboast.com Marcel

This article is based on the supposition that the app stores will continue to grow at the current pace. Pathetic. As the iOS store growth has slowed down so equally will the Android app stores growth. This is presumption at its worst
http://profiles.google.com/kdsandeep Sandeep Deshpande

yet Apple was bragging about 65K apps made for Ipads specifically
http://profiles.google.com/kdsandeep Sandeep Deshpande

the difference between android and iOS appstore is not the same as difference between 1 and 300K apps, nice try
http://twitter.com/ihbrune Henning

Beyond 50.000+ apps the sheer head count in appstores becomes more or less irrelevant for the average user. And with flash, html5 and so on the whole question will become nonsense…
Anonymous

All right, ALMOST anyone with a pulse…
http://appsforipads.net MaggieB

So what kind of vetting system does Google put apps through or does every farting app make it into their store? I prefer quality over quantity.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Martin-Hill/717947739 Martin Hill

So JohnDoey, do you count the iPad apps that are universal (run on the iPhone and the iPad) in just your iPhone totals or just your iPad totals or both?

Any of these options are problematic and don’t do justice to the totals in either category.

Far better to compare ecosystems as a whole – it is the same OS after all and the fact is that iPhone apps at 2x size do still run fine on the iPad whether they look good or not.

What are you going to do with Android which features not two but dozens of different size screens and aspect ratios from 2.7″ to 10″ and everything in between?

-Mart
http://www.facebook.com/people/Martin-Hill/717947739 Martin Hill

John, It should be said that while Google allows anyone to post any spamware, broken bit of code or “hello world” app, the total number of apps in the Android marketplace is completely meaningless. An estimated 45% of apps in the Marketplace are spam apps and iOS boasts well over 300 top tier games from the premiere game publishers ID, EA, Gameloft, Popcap, ngmoco, Pangea while Android has between 20-30 for example.

The number of apps in the Amazon Appstore will be a much more useful comparison once that gets established thanks to Amazon ensuring that the chaff is weeded out.

However, far better metrics for the comparison of app stores is app download numbers, paid app income and advertising income which actually measure the real numerical and financial wealth and health of each ecosystem.

By those measures, iOS leads Android by an absolutely enormous amount:

*App Store Revenue 2009 – 2010* (source: IHS ScreenDigest):
- iOS App Store grew from $769 million to $1.782 billion = $1.013 billion increase
- Android Marketplace grew from $11 million to $102 million = $91 million increase
So annual Android developer income is a meagre 6% of iOS with an annual rate of increase only 9% as large as iOS. The gap between the two is 1,000% and getting far larger every year.
- Apple captured 82% of the revenue from all app stores in 2010 compared to 5% for Android

Now you may think that Android developers are instead making their money with advertising, but that is not the case:

- 71% of all app downloads were to iOS devices in 2010 according to ABI Research
- iOS users are worth up to twice as much as Android to advertisers according to Mobclix
- Millennium reports iOS captured 45% advertising income marketshare vs 38% share for Android in March 2011
- Net Applications reports iOS captured 3.3x the web browser share of Android in March 2011

-Mart
Matthew

I like amazon app store much better than android market. Just more organized and also has free app of the day. Why doesn’t android market do that, or have a category for .99 cent apps for a day or just a .99 cent all the time.
Anonymous

Thanks for all the comments. I’m going to circle back to this one after a bit more digging.
Anonymous

And it will still have 10% of the revenue and 5% of the developers making things people actually want..
Anonymous

One can only wonder when Fandroids will actually start to *BUY* Android Apps. A bunch of Java garbage, if you ask me.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Mitchell-Senft/559886208 Mitchell Senft

Maybe you want, you know, in the name of honest journalism, address the piece at Roughly Drafted because the piece you’re writing up is pretty a crock. Offensively dishonest distortion. If nothing else, number of apps, at the end of the day, is an irrelevant metric.
Anonymous

It ultimately comes down to whether Apple chooses to tout quality vs. simply size. Initially, the iPhone was the biggest phone of its kind; now Android phones as a whole have eclipsed it in overall marketshare (even though no one phone has), and the differentiator is user experience. The same is true of the App Store: iPhone apps as a whole feature a far richer user experience than Android apps, and Apple is far more selective about what it puts on the shelf.

Does it not seem fishy to anyone else that the numbers in this study suggest the Android Marketplace more than doubling in size in six months? Assuming that wild, unsupported extrapolation were to come true, where do you think that volume is going to come from? From high-quality, well-vetted apps, or from massive piles of crap? Most likely the latter, because the former cannot be produced in volume, and the developers capable of producing it know they aren’t going to recoup their investment on Android. So while Apple has promoted the size of the App Store historically, it probably will be eclipsed by the Android Marketplace eventually, simply because there is no quality control whatsoever on Android. But actual users trying to wade through that cesspool to find anything of value will quickly see that size is not the only important factor.

I’ve been using Android for a year or so, after using both the iPhone and Palm Pre, and I’m probably going to switch back to the iPhone late this year, simply because I’m tired of feeling like I’m using the red-headed stepchild version of apps that are great on the iPhone.
Anonymous

Wasn’t it Apple, who started the “We’ve got X number of apps in our app store”…? It was Apple, who kept on spouting on about the NUMBER of apps. Now that they’re losing that metric, I suppose it no longer matters.
http://twitter.com/topscientist Top Scientist

We didn’t.
http://twitter.com/topscientist Top Scientist

You’re a moron. They are not Java “applets.” They are native apps, written in Java.
http://twitter.com/topscientist Top Scientist

Then you’re an idiot.

Google to Claim "World's Biggest App Store" Title From Apple in Five Months

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