14 DAY TRIAL // Google's efforts with Android are only now starting to pay off, as the platform is really taking off. The number of smartphones shipped with the Android OS continues to grow and there's hardly a week when a new Android-based phone isn't launched. The platform is still behind the iPhone in terms of market share and one area where Android seemed especially lacking was apps. While the Apple App Store boasted over 100,000 applications, the Android Marketplace was several times smaller. That too is changing, and at an increased pace, as the numbers of apps created for Android devices are growing each month. The latest numbers from AndroidLib.com show that 9,331 new ones were added to the Market place just last month.
To put the numbers in perspective, that's how many apps there were in total in the Android Marketplace less than half a year ago. As of right now, there are 27,243 applications in the online Marketplace, a very respectable figure, especially when you look at how it evolved. The Android Marketplace was launched about a year and a half ago, in October 2008. At the time, there were hardly a few hundred apps available. The number grew at a steady pace, but it took almost a year for it to reach 10,000 applications. The Apple App Store had ten times that back then.
But the end of 2009 proved very prolific for Android. The touted Motorola Droid landed, heralded as the best Android phone to date, selling a very respectable number of units in the Christmas holiday period. Obviously, the Google Nexus One came not long after. Still, in the first month of 2010, less than 4,500 apps were added to the Marketplace.
But things had reached a tipping point and it became clear to everyone that Android was only getting bigger. The following month, 5,500 new applications were added and, finally, more than 9,000 were added in March. There are now over 160,000 apps in the Apple App Store, so Google still has some way to go. The latest market share numbers show that Android had about nine percent of the US market in February, compared to Apple's 25,4 percent, having made significant strides in the previous three months. [via ReadWriteWeb]