Android Market Passes the 400,000 Apps Mark

Google’s Android Market, the official software portal for devices running under the company’s mobile operating system, has managed to double in about nine months, recent reports suggest.

The application storefront is said to have just passed the 400,000 applications mark, after reaching 200,000 applications in April 2011.

Distimo broke the news on Google’s Android Market and also noted that the storefront had a number of 300,000 applications in August last year.

Apparently, free applications available for download via the Android Market are one of the main growth drivers, at least this is what Distimo says.

“The main contributors to reach this milestone are free applications. Roughly, 2/3 of the available applications are free in Android Market. The percentage of free applications has steadily grown month over month from 60% in April 2011 to 68% free content at the end of 2011,” the company notes.

“One of the reasons behind this increase in free content is the success of the freemium business model,” the company continues.

They also explain that the growth of Google’s Android Market has accelerated. It needed 31 months to reach the 200,000 milestone, but managed to add the next 200,000 apps in only nine months. The growth is faster when compared to Apple’s App Store as well.

“Interesting to see is that Android Market has taken 31 months to reach the 200,000 milestone, while Apple only needed 22 months to do this for iPhone apps,” Distimo notes.

“However, Android Market needed only four more months to pass the 300.000 milestone, while the App Store for iPhone needed eight more months after Apple hits the 200,000 milestone.

“Moreover, the gap between the 300K and 400K milestone is also smaller for the Android Market than for the Apple App Store for iPhone, 4 and 7 months respectively.”

Google’s storefront has more than 100,000 active publishers. On average, they came up with 4.1 applications (which is actually less than the 5 apps on average reported a year ago).

“The milestone reached by Google Android Market relates to applications that are currently active in the store. Many applications have been removed by Google or developers, due to infringement of copyright for example,” Distimo concludes.