The iPhone and iPad both became wild successes in part because Apple has been leading the App race. With over 300,000 applications, they’re a cut above anyone else in the field — or, at least, they were. Now, with Google racing forward and closing the gap, Apple will have to watch its back if it wants to maintain this crucial advantage.
According to a report from Mashable, Google has gone from about 100,000 apps in their market to over 200,000. About how long did this effort take? Exactly sixty-three days.
Sixty-three days for 100,000 apps — a benchmark that originally took Google nearly two years to reach, and one that Microsoft’s still struggling marketplace is a long ways away from — shows us a massive rate of growth. In fact, it means that Google may just be a few months away from surpassing Apple as the leader for available applications.
The reason for the huge growth is in part due to Android’s international expansion. The Android Market is now available in over twenty countries, giving Google a lot of legs to stand on. Google has also been pushing for greater development on their platform, releasing a number of great new tools for browser and mobile-based application creators.
Of course, they’re not the only competitor out there. No doubt, Apple will continue to expand their marketplace, and Microsoft is doing its best to play catchup (they’ve officially reached the 5,000 application mark — and they’ve done so more quickly than Android did). However, no one can doubt Google’s marketplace is ridiculously successful. Since its launch in 2008, the Android Marketplace has seen two and a half billion application downloads; they’ve doubled their total available apps in just two months; and their new phone releases are putting total handset sales right on par with the iPhone.
