Android Edges Out iPhone in Number of Free Applications Available
We can’t say this was much of a shock to us, but analytics research firm Distimo today released figures about the world’s smartphone app stores. The highlight of the report was Android’s reign in amount of free applications opposed to iPhone – 134.3 thousand opposed to 121.8 thousand. And this is all while Android still has yet to come close to the number of Apps in the app store for both tablets and phones.
It’s expected considering the nature of the Android market’s revenue model these days. More and more, developers are looking to ads and in-game purchases for revenue instead of one-time purchases at the virtual point of sale. While we’d like to believe this is because that’s truly “the Google way”, we’re sure the real reason is because – well – a lot of Android users just don’t like paying for apps.
Android holds the number two spot for the amount of applications in its market currently, but Distimo expects the picture to change drastically at the end of the year as they forecast Android beating out the iPhone to become the number one market in terms of size. Sure, a lot of it’s junk, but a bigger number means one less marketing bulletpoint for old uncle Jobs to exploit. [via MobileCrunch]