14 DAY TRIAL // Google's Android Market, the portal through which all users of devices running under the platform can download and install applications, is growing fast, with some of the latest predictions on the area suggesting that it would be able to outpace the Apple App store this summer.
However, while the number of applications available for download from the storefront is on the rise, things are a little different when it comes to users' habits of downloading them.
Out of hundreds of thousands of applications available through the software portal, only 96 of them have been downloaded over 5 million times, a recent report (PDF) from Distimo shows.
Moreover, there is only one application that topped the 50 million downloads mark, the Google Maps, which makes it the most popular software in the storefront.
Further more, things are not looking good at all for around 20 percent of the free applications available through the Android Market, as they were downloaded less than 100 times until now.
The said report also shows that 80 percent of all paid applications were downloaded less than 100 times all around the world as well.
When compared to the Apple App Store, the Android Market clearly poses some more challenges to application developers than Apple's portal does.
“The refresh rate of top application charts is significantly higher in the Apple App Store for iPhone than in the Google Android Market,” Distimo explains.
“During the month of April, there were 94 distinct applications with a top 10 (free or paid) position in the Apple App Store for iPhone in the US; there were only 26 distinct applications that reached a top 10 position in the Google Android Market.”
When it comes to games, things are looking bad for Android as well, since only five games in the Market have over 250,000 downloads around the world, while the App Store had ten of them topping that mark in the US alone in the last two months.
Have a look at the graphs attached to this article to see the total downloads of all applications in the Android Market between April 1 – May 19 in the United States.
“The download tiers above show the proportion of applications that were downloaded worldwide between these intervals. The figures reveal that the majority (51.8%) of free applications have been downloaded less than 1,000 times to date,” the report shows.
