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We’re sitting in live at Eric Schmidt’s keynote here at Mobile World Congress, and one of his first talking points was that Android market now has 150,000 apps in the market – it was somewhere around 50,000 just 9 months ago.
AppBrain released some early numbers based on their own statistic they keep back in late December, and the number looked a lot better as they’d estimated over 200,000. That may not be the case today, but 150,000 is still something to be proud of, I think.
Android has gained a lot of popularity with developers starting in 2010, the year that Android skyrocketed right past most of its competition.
Countless surveys and studies have been done that show developers are indifferent when it comes to developing for iPhone or Android, and nearly half of all developers actually prefer dealing with Android – everything from the flexibility in development to the freedom of the market.
And countless industry reports help developers reassure themselves in their plans to focus on Android just as much as they focus on iOS. Android became the world’s top selling platform in Q4 2010, beating the “king” Symbian, and they’re expected to be number one in market share in 2014.
Developers see just how many people are clinging to Android. The strategy Google’s employed doesn’t matter to us in this story, but the end result of that strategy shows them that there is finally real money to be had here.
2011 will only be greater as we see an entirely different Android market take off – one that’ll be geared for Honeycomb-based tablets. And the phone side of things will only keep growing.
I remember seeing this same number month ago. And have seen higher numbers elsewhere. It keep going up and down.
yet, all my apps that are on my phone, are no longer in the market place via phone
I think it’s pointless to brag about the large number of Apps available on a certain platform. Only a few thousand are actually used, several of the 150,000 are outdated, unused, duplicated, incomplete, or unpopular apps. The reason why Apple has more than Android is because they have more “junk” apps. As Android get older, they will be filled up with more junk apps as well.
yayyy finally, and this with the release of Words with Friends shows how the android market is becoming what it needs to be for consumers AND developers to be happy
Now, has the emulator gotten faster for devs? Last I heard the emulator was a bit of an old dog.
There is only 1 app I use on consistent basis, angry birds. All other apps are shit.
Many Android marketplace exist other than Google. These far better because all apps are free. Android Marketplace sucks because you have to pay or are riddled with ads. Simply:
1. Root Android phone
2. Access one of many marketplaces where aps have been uploaded as free apps
3. No more annoying payments, no more annoying ads.
This why Android rocks. This why crApple sucks.
Of the 150k Apps:
130k of them are skins of various Android component replacements.
Try search for ADWLauncher, it will be burried into the 15th page of applications of the search results. There are literally thousands of “Skins” that show up in the search result before the application, making it very tedious and difficult to find the application itself.
Of all the things that android is doing right, the lack of monitoring and enforcement of categories on applications has made the Android application marketplace a full-blown mess. This can’t be good for companies that are spending real money on R&D / Development costs for the platform.
You search for 1 app, and you get fake knock-offs, skins, ‘cheat programs’, etc. Many of which are nothing more than scams or dangerous applications that require way too much access to the phone than the application should need.
I despise the walled garden of apple’s iPhone store, it’s quite annoying.. but google needs to really figure out a way to clean up their market place because it’s being hijacked by scammers and spammers.
@Mark,
While this is a gross overestimation, I see what you are getting at. I will say this; Android needs more games. Plenty of the Apps we see in iOS are simply not necessary for Android because it has functionality built in that iOS does not. )This is coming from a guy who was iPhone only from launch until a few short months ago).
Well since about a half of the apps are “sexy Japanese girls” i really dont care much about it. Android has MANY MANY junk apps and i really hate it. The number 1 paid app is F**king Robo Defense?? And N.1 free is Jewels?
I believe that at the end of 2011/ beginning of 2012 Android will have more apps in market than Apple, but Apple will still have better apps.
And what marketplaces where you can get paid apps free you mean?
Thanks for the credit, we actually never quoted 200,000 apps though.
Last public stat we shared was around 130,000 apps at the beginning of the year. Even better, on the AppBrain Android apps (http://www.appbrain.com) site we filter out about 60,000 apps because we consider them cookie cutter/low quality apps though. So check out appbrain.com if you want to experience a less cluttered app discovery experience.
@ Android Fan:
So android rocks because it allows you to steal software without the technical knowledge that would otherwise be requisite? (you can steal software for iPhone too if you jailbreak the thing)
I posit the position that you’re a schmuck as well as a noob.
Re: stats, I’d be a lot more impressed if Google ever got around to deleting all the app-spam :P