Android Market gets 9,000 new apps in March, world domination can't be far behind
Wanna know what exponential growth looks like? Try following Android's progress over the past few months and you'll be treated to plenty of rapidly ascending charts. This latest one from AndroLib is no different, illustrating as it does the ever-increasing influx of new games and applications for Google's mobile platform. Developers must clearly believe Android's growing market share is only going to keep expanding, as last month saw their most productive output yet, with a sweet 9,308 new additions to the Market. Naturally, the same proviso applies as with Apple's inflated App Store numbers -- quantity does not guarantee quality -- but what we're witnessing is surely the solidification of Android as a legitimate and fully fledged member of the smartphone OS upper echelon. And that can only be a good thing.
























Damn! That's huge!!
@Motlee Thats what she said!
@iluvms I doubt it.
@Motlee is that a large growth or are you just happy to have us?
..and the people try to say that fragmentation will kill Android's app store, make things too difficult on developers and alienate users. Android OS subscribers grew the most in February (Engadget hasn't released any numbers, but their growth was, once again, sexy), surprise, surprise. As they say, "The proof, is in the pudding." And this pudding ain't souring one bit.
Huge number, although at least 1/3 of the new apps are spam.
For details see here: http://blog.appbrain.com/2010/03/appbrain-launches-automatic-filtering.html
Look, I looove Android and all of its open platform goodness, but there is no way these are all apps. "Apps" in the market can be anything from keyboard themes and UI tweaks to fully fledged games and a totally new UI.
@Motlee
Really? No one said this...?
IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAND!!!!
@uwe Even if it is 1/3rd spam thats 6k apps in a month. I currently have 6 downloaded to my Droid... I think I better go free some space.
@OneWhoTweets And this cant be said about the iphone? Most of the 127k apps are the same "junkware".
@Motlee
That's a lot of fart apps.
@uwe Most the apps for the iPhone are shit too. Yeah, they have hundreds of thousands but only a small percentage are actually useful.
@Motlee The number of apps might be huge, but I can't get access to any of them because I do not live in one of the ridiculously few countries that have access to paid apps. Must be embarrassing for Google to be even more controlling than Apple on this matter.
@Sogeking
WHAT?! NINE THOUSAND?!?!
@Zer0s
This is not entirely true since you can't have things like alternative keyboards and browsers in the App Store. Subsequently, no keyboard themes or UI tweaks.
*thinks for a second* ...So yeah, there must be a lot more fart apps than I thought.
@Sogeking
Over 9000!
Pedobear agrees!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGyKmvQesgs
@Motlee Just make mikandi an official android app on the store, and this will be the coolest - http://bit.ly/mikandi-porn-application-best-or-worst
@Mr Blue There are themed versions of apps in the App Store for every sports team, flag of every country, for each city, etc. This kind of spammy abuse of the app store a feature of all these apps stores, not just the iPhone or Android ones.
@Motlee Too bad most of them are shit.
True its completely destroyed Windows Mobile, Windows Phone, Palm OS,
Webos (very good OS let down by palm), blackberry (very dated OS),
which leaves iPhone OS, Symbian (very dated OS) to rival Android
@OCEAN CLAK
Pretty expected.
I wonder who wins, the closed and developer frustrating iPhone OS, the old and outdated Symbian, or the open, modern, easy to develop for, and fast growing Android... Hmm...
@Invader Par
The only thing outdated about Symbian is its UI. That is being reworked dramatically, and will be quite good. From a functionality perspective, its on par if not beyond the competition.Best of all, it can run for days before a battery needs to be charged, it can run on low specs.
I like Android a lot better than Mobile OSX, but Symbian is hardly dated, just because its been around longer.
@OCEAN CLAK "completely destroyed" - oh really, it destroyed WP7 before the launch....(and how can you destroy a OS btw?)
clearly, you seem to have lost contact with reality. Android is still behind WinMo in terms of marketshare and mindshare (it's still a geek-OS, hardly any average consumers know it). with WP7 Android will look absolutely outdated, especially when it comes to gaming. Being a fanboy you might not have noticed, but you just got told by someone who uses all sorts of products and doesn't hang on to one frakin company.
@Invader Par
developer frustrating...
talk about generalizing. It sure hasn't stopped Apple from having millions of apps in the App Store. And it doesn't change the fact that devs want to create the next "big thing" for the App Store.
@TheLondonExchange *cough* millions *cough* bullcrap *cough*
@mschmidler
Windows Mobile slowly being fazed out, by this time next year windows mobile will be finished and thats coming from a person whos got 2 windows mobile devices in front of him, as a geek OS a lot of winmo fanboys have left for Android,
Exclude X-box live Windows Phone 7 is dated
NO Cut, Copy, Paste
NO Memory Cards
NO File Browser
NO Multitasking
NO Sideload apps
NO OEM custimazation and skinning
NO WinMo apps
NO Get any Applications from any website that has apps
@OCEAN CLAK
I 100% agree... Every time I use a windows mobile device or even a windows pc, I always think "if they just changed these 5 thing's it'd be perfect"... and then they do something like release windows 7, still with no support for 2 taskbars for multi-screen users, I'll stick with gnome and iphone
@OCEAN CLAK
excluding your top 2 you got the iphone right there and thats a success.
@OCEAN CLAK
You talk as if you have started 2-3 companies, saw them grow very fast and sold them. And hence you have a lot of idea of what may happen to the companies -- much more than the guys running those companies. In reality you are a person who finds enough time to comment on the blogs. So in essence you are one of those whose fun we make when you are not around! lol..... People have predicted many things about iPhone OS, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7, and Palm OS. I think you can learn from their experience. Keep your feet on the ground. You may fly high and end up being mocked.
@Invader Par I wouldn't call it easy to develop for. It's better than MIDP, yes. But not by much.
Symbian^3/4 looks like it will win the 'easy to develop for' crown.
@OCEAN CLAK Actually I agree with you except on the part of Blackberry. They actually have gained even more ground this last quarter and that is amazing considering they have 40% market share in the US. They quietly are doing great and until Android or iPhone give business users a better alternative and make the platform more secure then this will continue to happen.
@angermeans source?
@cherryboom
What is there to rival? Android is a free OS that Google pays to partners to use. Hell, Google pays Apple 100 million a year to cary Google search. Google pays to play with their one trick pony ass. They are in it only for the ad dollars. They don't do hardware. Android is a gimmick. A deep penetrating gimmick.
And once Google gets that ass tapped in the internet search world you won't see all this, if any, free Google swag.
Wow... Talk about drinking steveis special koolaid!!!! LMAO
@OCEAN CLAK WM7 lack of "multi-tasking' is just like Android.
@psc2 what do you mean no support for two taskbars. i just install ultramon and i'm done. separate taskbars for my 2 monitors.
@OCEAN CLAK See it through the eyes of MS: They want to have something competitive in the market that Apple is in, namely the market for the average consumer. Everyone of us knows people with iPhones. But how many of them have complained about:
NO Memory Cards
NO File Browser
NO Multitasking
NO Sideload apps
NO OEM custimazation and skinning
NO WinMo apps
NO Get any Applications from any website that has apps
BTW you mention Copy, Paste - THIS IS WRONG Charlie Kindle already confirmed it will come.
Except the memory cards and exchangeable batteries EVERY THING YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT will be done by Xda-Developers. And that's the point: We are geeks. If you own a WinMo device like I do, Xda-Devs is your second home. And the same people that are into hacking/customizing now complain about..... WHAT?
@JFH
"From a functionality perspective, its on par if not beyond the competition."
Sorry, the competition is no longer WinMo buddy. Symbian is up against tried and true Unix AND Linux. Android and OSX are way beyond it, and always will be at the foundation. The only way they could catch up is to ditch EKA2 for a flavor of the BSD/Linux kernels... and quite frankly WinMo / WinPho is going to have the same troubles, being nowhere near as stable and mature.
"Best of all, it can run for days before a battery needs to be charged, it can run on low specs."
I don't buy smartphones to get something that is underpowered. Really, Linux has been tested to run on more or less every modern CPU architecture... Android could definitely lose some weight and run on lower end / lower power chipsets.
mmmmmmm
I'm so glad I decided to get an Android phone.
I'm also glad that the fragmentation argument is starting to look like a load of bullshit.
@DaveBrubeck It always has to anyone who's known half a shit about Android :3
@DaveBrubeck
Fragmentation may be helping android from a market share point of view even if it isn't helping from a development point of view
but in the long run the fragmentation may bring in more developers which will balance out the fact that it is difficult to develop for every android phone
@chaddledee What he said
@chaddledee
Hey,
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there still a problem with bringing certain applications to all Android devices?
I'm still trying to understand everything about Android before jumping ship, but from what I can tell you can only download applications to the phone itself. Also because their are so many different kinds of hardware running Android, doesn't that mean there IS huge fragmentation?
Again, I'm still trying to learn everything I can about Android so feel free to school my ass.
@NaeemTHM Sweet Xenu I sound like an idiot before I have my morning coffee.
@NaeemTHM The only fragmentation is the phones that still run on Android 1.5. Everything Android 1.6 to current generally run the same apps without any issues at all. The only apps that REQUIRE a specific version is some of the Google Apps. The general market apps run just peachy though. As for different hardware who cares? Let's use any modern desktop OS. They run on a variety of motherboards, processors and graphics cards yet the applications written to run on that OS run fine. Same principle. You have to get out of the Apple mindset of ONLY ONE. Granted a G1 may not run a SNES emulator as good as a N1 or Droid but it will still run regardless.
Yay :3
Lets see if Apple can counter this later today.
@BurtonBytes
How on earth would Apple counter it? Android runs on multiple vendor handsets, they are always going to outsell Apple in terms of handsets and therefore there will be more apps, it's pretty easy maths really.
Having said that, what Apple has achieved in the time it has been in the smarthphone market is nothing short of astonishing.
@BurtonBytes
All the android phones combined have not reached the level of the iPhone sales...
@wilvo Don't forget about the iPod touch and iPad.
@wilvo
When I talk about countering this, my thoughts turn to bringing more product differentiation, more reasons to buy an Apple branded device over an Android one.
I think put simply, Android is a threat to the current Apple iPhone and OS version. My hope is that Apple will move their OS and hardware significantly forward as to bring in more product innovation, features and usability. Apple's OS by my own admission, a iPhone user from launch, does now seem creaky. I'm running a 3G and my hope is that now my contract is up with O2, there will be a genuinely good reason to await the 3GS replacement in June/July.