10,000 iPhone Apps: Why We Care And You Should

The Apple iPhone App Store now has 10,000 Applications available for download and we’d like to take a moment to applaude that figure as Google Android sits with only 462 applications in Android Market. The App Store launched on July 11th while Android Market launched in late October, yet some news organizations are reporting the figures as if its some type of apocolyptic foreshadowing of what is to come.

But nope – what’s to come is the rest of this article where we’ll put this thing into perspective using a little… dare we say, logic? Mmmhmmm uhoh no he din’t girlfriend!

First of all, congrats to Apple and the iPhone. I hope Android Fans embrace the success of the iPhone because the successes and failures of that platform can be used to aid the success of Android. A few days ago, Apple announced the most downloaded iPhone Apps to date. If I was a developer I would be taking a CLOSE look at this list and seeing what type of applications have the most potential. This is market research at its best.

While Android and the iPhone have their differences, the core value of enabling consumers with a central hub to download third party applications is close to identical. The iPhone is a few months ahead of Android in the life cycle and Android developers can use that as a guide to follow the relative successes and avoid the relative failures.

And oh my gosh, look at this! Apple just published a list of the top paid and free applications in a number of key categories! Wow, talk about nice research for Android developers, sheesh! Lets take a look at the Top 10 overall Paid and Free apps while we make some distinguishing marks on the graphic.

Okay so of the top 10 Paid Applications, 6 were games and 2 were essentially useless novelty apps. Its pretty safe to say that regardless of price, these Top 10 Applications made absolute BANK. Meanwhile, take a look at the Top 10 Free Apps. These are more connectivity tools resources from existing online companies… many of which Android already has.

To me, the clear difference is PAID applications. Android Market will start offering paid applications and I bet you as soon as that happens we’ll see a HUGE influx of games that will have the Android Application numbers skyrocketing. Why would a game maker release these games for free right now when in a couple months they could sell it for a HUGE profit, with a good shot at being one of the Top 10 Paid Applications?

Take that one step further, why would ANY developer release ANY application if one of their main goals is to make money? If iPhone apps as pointless as KoiPond and iBeer made people rich, why not put more work into perfecting their application or making new ones and then release them for .99 cents or so come January? If I was an Android developer, I would be looking at this data and saying, “Time to make some games and creative novevlty apps,” and start churning that stuff out as quick as possible before the Paid Market goes live.

Some would say that FREE is all about the Open Source spirit and I agree, but the lack of Paid applications is the Hoover Dam of Android Market. And I think there could quite possibly be one more big thing holding developers back… Android Developer’s Challenge #2.

Another Android Developer’s Challenge was supposed to have been announced and, supposedly, will be announced before the year’s end. We haven’t heard anything about this in quite awhile but again… there have to be a good number of developers who would, instead of releasing their app now, work on it more and enter it into the Android Developer’s Challenge in hopes of huge monetary compensation. This could especially be motivating those who want to release Free applications.

And lastly… this is a marathon, not a sprint. Right now the Apple OS is limited to the iPhone and while the volume thus far is incredibly impressive, the fact that the OHA is comprised of dozens of world class companies across the globe and numerous manufacturers and carriers all eager to support Android, I see no evidence that suggests Apple will outpace Android in Number of Applications, Quality of Applications, etc… for any sustained period of time.

In the end, the best part of this whole thing is that Apple and Google are being discussed as leading mobile phone entities with the reason being they are offering consumers more. Each market is only in pre-school at this point and we’re already trying to guess which one will go to a better college… it makes no sense.

But what does make sense is these summarizing points:

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