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It’s been a long time coming but according to the data from “mobile app market intelligence firm” Research2Guidance, the Android Market seems to have hit the half a million app mark with a little over 500,000 applications published for the month of September. Another tidbit I found interesting is that over 37% of app submissions have also been removed at some point for various reasons.
In comparison, the Apple App Store stands 600,000 apps strong and has about a 24% removal rate. What’s more is according to the data, Android developers seem to be a tad more “productive” than their Apple’s counterparts, publishing around more than 6 apps to the Android Market since its launch. Compare that to around 4 published apps per developer in Apple’s App Store.
While this is quite a landmark for Android, there’s always the argument of quality vs. quantity. Let’s hope now that the Android Market has the quantity, Google may begin policing their Market a little better and get rid of things like duplicate apps and blatant theft. You can check out Research2Guidance’s full press release below.
Android Market reaches half a million successful submissions
37% of published apps have been removed from the Android Market.
The actual total number of applications published on the Android Market leapt to over 500,000 in September 2011. In the meantime, the Apple App Store stands at just over 600,000 successful submissions: just 20% more. But over 37% of the applications published were later removed from the Android Market for various reasons, whereas the Apple App Store has removed just 24% of published apps in comparison, as of the end of September.
Although Apple regularly cleans up its store from inappropriate or outdated content, its active application share still exceeds that of Android. It is likely that the more rigid application submission requirements prevent developers from publishing multiple trial or low quality applications whereas publishers in the Android Market place a lot of market testing, trials, demo and malware content. Over 78% of the apps removed from the Android Market were free, which could mean that publishers put more effort into the applications they place with the pay-per-download business model, thus ensuring that it is kept longer in store.
The share of deactivated apps in the WP7 Marketplace today stands at just 13%. However WP7 Marketplace is a comparably young store and many publishers are still exploring its potential. Fifteen months after its launch (comparable to the WP7 store now), the Android Market similarly had 86% of its apps active and a significant application store clean-up didn’t get started until the end of 2010.
Android developers are significantly more productive than Apple’s. The average publisher on Android has placed more than 6 applications in the Market since launch, compared to just over 4 apps on average that have been published by iOS developers.
Over the past few months, the Android Market has been maintaining an exponential growth, but is still lagging behind the app store market leader, Apple. In Q3 of 2011, the number of active mobile applications in the Android Market stood at 319,161 compared to 459,589 in Apple App store.
Download our free Android Market Insights Vol. 6.
[Via BGR]
I’d take that with a grain of salt.
I know this doesn’t mean to much, but in Verizon’s press release for the Galaxy Nexus, they mention the Android Market:
“Verizon Wireless 4G LTE network to access more than 300,000 apps and games from Android Market™”
They got that from Google, So if I had to guess I’d say there are closer to 300,000 apps than 500,000. Who knows though
I do.. and so do many Android users. Just look at the post above! there are
347 288 available app and over 560 000 submitted apps for Android market.
This does not consider other markets, like Amazon, Verizon, etc.
Well it does say Q3 (End of June 2011) there were 300k apps available. If the growth rate is what it is, then 500k is possible. But I doubt that too.
At any rate, android app growth has been significant and will continue to climb. I will agree that Google needs to get more aggressive about policing the market. There should be no reason for malware to get through.
You can see the number of submitted apps (560 000) and available apps 347288 as of 10pm CST Oct 21st, 2011 here:
http://www.androlib.com/appstatsdownloads.aspx
There is no need to doubt.
As it stands right now, Google’s Market is very much quantity over quality. Apple has done a nice job only letting the working apps stay. I still love Android though!
Nonsense. Have you tried all 600,000 apps on the App Store? No, you haven’t, so you ASSUME that they have done a “nice job.” You know what they say about the word ASSUME- it makes an ASS out of U and ME.
Well, only if I believed your assumption.
I have at least 200 apps on my Android phone. They all work. Just under half are games in some fashion or form. Obviously, I think they’re all pretty high quality. I think there’s quite a bunch out there.
I’ve owned this thing about a year and a half. That far in with my iPod Touch netted me about 50 or so apps. Maybe that’s just chance, but those are my personal numbers.
What difference does it make? Nobody tries out that many apps. Maybe a couple hundred at best. Once you get past 100,000 it’s all meaningless.
~Android stole the idea of having half a million apps from Apple~
Fart App 1 (Classic)
Fart App 2 (Burrito Bomb)
Fart App 3 (High pitched)
Fart App ..
Frat App 600,000 ( With Spurting Diarrhea)
Fart apps sound really good on iPhone 4S high quality speaker.
As good as farts can sound, I suppose.
I love Android, but about 40% of the apps in the market are total junk.
If 40% of 500,000 are junk then it looks like you still have 300,000 apps to choose from.
Still not enough?
I laugh when Apple/Android gloat about how many apps they have. 99% of all Apple and Android apps are garbage anyways.
You know the funny thing is, is you were to pull down the stats of the apps. I would probably bet only a few thousand at best are truly downloaded by the masses. Yeah there are those other fringe apps that a group of people might need. But over all it that core 1000 or so apps that really matter. This goes for both the android market and the app store.
having a good amount of quality apps matters that is half the reason i switched from blackberry the other half was at the time all gsm models were only 2g it takes them forever to catch up with hardware
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I wish we had a lot less apps on the market but have them updated ad much as apple ones and high quality like apple ones. Ex) fruit ninja on the iphone is so much better then the one on the android market. Graphics, speed, smoothness and I have the EVO 3d so It’s not lacking in speed