The Weather Channel App Reaches 5-Million Downloads on Android

Some publishers are doing insanely well for themselves in the Android market. The Weather Channel – one of the most popular application publishers (on a number of different platforms) – just surpassed five-million downloads for their Android application yesterday. The feat makes them the most used weather application on the platform, and one of the top five applications overall.

Being an Android user, you’d never know how well certain apps are doing past a certain point as Android reports them as having “>250,000 downloads” whenever they reach that point. Ever since version 1.0, Google still hasn’t expanded that field to allow for applications that topple the millions mark. I don’t think they realize just how fast the market has grown over the past year and a half (even after they shouted their stats through a megahorn at the Google I/O conference last month).

If you need to keep up on simple or detailed weather forecasts and reports, then give The Weather Channel’s app a try. It’s like having a meteorologist in your pocket, if there’s no better way to put it.

27 Comments

I like WeatherBug better. WeatherBug has a reporting station (Eagle Peak Middle School) here in Redwood Valley, CA, while the closest one with the Weather Channel is 10 miles south of us in Ukiah, CA. The Weather Channel App is nice, but WeatherBug has a lot more weather reporting stations.

Yes, 10 miles can make a difference, it can be snowing here but raining in Ukiah, or raining out here but just cloudy in Ukiah.

Weather Channel app is the best. Only bad thing is theres no quit feature to close the temp notification thing.

It’s far superior to weather bugs little reporting stations they put up at schools.

I’m with Mike C. I have tried both and went with Weatherbug. I like it’s widget and tray icon better. The Weather Channel one is ugly.

I agree. Weatherbug has a reporting station like 1 mile from me, while Weather Channel’s nearest was over 5 miles away. Also, I like that you can customize the widget and notification bar refresh interval to longer or shorter than an hour. With Weather Channel, it’s always just one hour (or maybe shorter, I forget). I use it in conjunction with Weather widgets (yr.no) by Thomware. Although their info comes from Norway, I just like having the widget with a somewhat accurate 3 day foreast along with a Sense-style flip clock. Unfortunately, you can’t download it anymore because of an IP dispute with HTC. :(

I love Weather Channel App, i simply mark my home town and my weather stays at my notification bar, i tried weather bug with firestations, schools, for weather stations.. too much and once i found that in my home it was not rainign but 8 miles north it was so i said nah to un reliable, and so i stayed with TWC!

On my G1, this app bogs my phone down. Setting a default location is guaranteed to drain battery.

i too use weatherbug. it sucked on my desktop years ago, but it was great on my bb storm & even better on my incredible

Weatherbug is better. Graphics are better. More Reporting stations faster updating. So much so that I bought Weatherbug elite. The radar loops are great. Also have saved locations of frequently visited areas so I can check it before i get there. Plethora of desktop widgets to pick from

Weatherbahumbug! Weather Channel is the shiznit. They do annoy me with that stupid tray status bar icon. I always kill it using my task manager (I don’t need constant weather info I want to check when I want). Other than that it’s perfect.

Those who want to kill the notification icon, get a task manager/killer. They should fix that though.

I’m in the “Weatherbug Elite is better” camp. I tried both, and while this new WC app is a big improvement over the last one, it’s still no WeatherBug.

Weatherbug looks better, the radar loops are a wonderful addition, more reporting stations, better desktop widgets, etc.

To echo others – WeatherBug is better – My wife and I both used Weather Channel’s app for about a month before trying Weatherbug – and BOTH of us prefer WeatherBug’s app.

Tried both, prefer Weatherbug. I use the plugin for the follow feature, which is great because it updates “where you are” without having to have multiple locations setup manually. I actually prefer the temp in the notification bar. When it’s set to automatically update regularly, it’s nice to simply glance at your phone and see what’s happening outside temp wise. IT departments always get stuck in the basement, so that works great for me when I can’t get out of the phone room all that often.

I heard weather bug drains mucho battery…any input?

I just use HTC’s Sense weather app

Ok, so I may be dumb. But does WeatherBug allow “in-motion” radar like the Weather Channel App does? I can’t figure out if it’s in the free version. I wonder if it’s in the paid version. Anyone know?

went back to the sense stock one – weather channel looks ugly as hell!

What are the other apps on the top? i’ve been looking for stats on this for some time.

@trainwreck. I’ve heard that a lot but haven’t seen it. The battery on my Nexus lasts a long time and I never shut Weatherbug off.

I too don’t like Weather Channel. What the hack – giving me weather at the airport, which is 10 miles away? The weather conditions are usually different there. My favorite is WeatherEye.