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A new week, another Android milestone. The AndroidDev twitter just announced that the Android Market has reached 100,000 applications. Pretty darn impressive. Let’s put this in perspective: right around a year ago the Motorola Droid was poised to land on Verizon and take the mobile world by storm. At it’s launch new Android users could expect a selection of no more than 20,000 applications. By my math that’s a 500 percent increase in available applications in under year.
The Android Market still trails Apple’s AppStore by about 150,000 available applications, but the argument that Android is lacking in the apps department is quickly becoming moot. While the tweet is about as official as you could want, we still wait for a more full-fledged announcement to come later in the day.
[via AndroidCommunity]
The iTunes AppStore has 300,000 apps now.
[http://www.intomobile.com/2010/10/17/apple-itunes-app-store-300000-apps/]
Actually, it’s a 400% increase… 500% as much. :-) it increased by 80,000, but I degress, quite impressive even though a good number of them are “football babes” and other crap.
There are countless apps for “Hot Asian Pics” and “Harry Potter Puzzle” Maybe half of the apps are viable.
Unfortunately, the majority of those applications are crappy bogus apps that are most likely illegal for using licensed characters. Android really needs to implement some kind of filter, before this gets completely out of control.
I have to wonder. How many of the iTunes apps are actually useful? Supposedly Apple screens out “football babes” and other content evidencing incorrect or dangerous thinking. So what are those 300,000 apps? I would have a hard time just trying to make up descriptions of, say, 20,000 apps without resorting to a lot of duplication — or apps that are little more than a “bookmark” front end to a mobile website.
@Marty… iTunes App Store also has a 3 year head start on the Android Market
The majority of apps in the market place are crap, at least that’s how there perceived because if any apps are actually worth a damn no one would know it because of how the market place has the apps arranged. For all those apps how many can we call high quality apps? I’ll go with a figure right around 10%… maybe…. I for one can care less for these figures simply because they only account for bloat. Yes we love Android, but the market place is in need of a major over haul and might I add, needs a major clean up to boot!
joedon3, I don’t think Marty was being snooty – only the article here suggests that itunes has 250,000 (150,000 more than Android, it says), but Marty suggests it has more.
@ Joedon3….. So what …… Google has the money and the know how, if they wanted the change and the dev’s to accomplih that goal they could have the change and dev’s to do it. Palm and their WebOS had gameloft games in the market place well before Android….were there is a will there is a way. What say you?
So, iTunes has about 200,000 more ways than Android to interface with Facebook and Twitter. There are a lot of duplications on both markets. There are probably only about 100 unique ideas in either market, all of the rest are variations on those ideas. There is also a lot junk in both markets.
All these apps and the market still sucks big hairy sweetbreads!!!!
Please Big G, give the market a complete overhaul!!!
Thanks
I’d be willing to bet my left testacle that 99,900 of those 100,000 apps are a complete waste of my fucking time. If they weren’t, I’d have them on my phone right now.
I can’t wait for my iOS farting apps to be available on Android Market!!
People, the point is the Android marketing is quickly growing. Many are apps you may not want, but this shows developers are working to get their apps in the market. That will include quality apps. Apple loves touting how many apps they have in their market, let Android get some recognition.
I dont think google is every going to “clean out” the market. But verizon, amazon, et al will filter it out with their rules. So if you want a filtered version check those markets when they show up.
I too take these figures with a grain of salt. Android could have 1,000,000 apps for all I care but if it doesn’t have a quality app that’s available on the iPhone then I lose.
As it stands, there are hundreds of top-level apps/games that are available on the iPhone that are not available (or no quality equivalent) for Android. On the other hand, there are probably about a dozen (I am being VERY generous with that figure) top-level apps for Android that are not available for the iPhone.
most of the apps are crap, i no longer browse the market for the latest apps, its just sad and pathetic. Google and with all respect to their open policy, they need to do more control on the market
@ssummer- a dozen? You clearly haven’t been using Android for long. And as far as the rest of you complaining, just download AppBrain from the market or use http://www.appbrain.com/ http://www.appstorehq.com/ or another app store filter – that’s the OPEN beauty of Android. If you are really a genius and think you can do better, then use App Inventor http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/ and create your own superior apps. Again, something you can’t do on any other phone OS.
Better yet, go buy a Blackberry or Palm Pre or Symbian phone or Windows Phone 7, check their app markets and to compare and then SHUT THE #$@% UP!!!
I’m sorry but as a dev I agree, 90% of these apps are utter garbage, written by noob developers and slapped together in a few hours to do stupid stuff like show a few pictures. THAT is not an app! An app actually DOES something useful. Even though my app has been very successful, I am tired of the market in the sense that it is too easy unfortunately for dumbass junior dev’s to just slap something into it. If you want to learn coding that’s fine but keep your garbage out of the market. And this also goes for you too, third-world country spam app anal raping coders.
I guess it’s probably OK as a theory, in that the democratic process of the market will help filter the junk, and it would work too if Google had better market search tools. This is probably why people use AppBrain.com, etc, which I believe does good filtering of junk already.
-B
Is it not clearly obvious that these high numbers represent apps that are old, useless, pointless, worthless, and probably won’t even work on the latest phones. How do you even really make yourself aware of what 300,000 or even 100,000 apps actually do? What a complete marketing joke!! For some reason that completely escapes me, this is supposed to actually mean something important, and people keep giving it credence. I would love to actually see Apple’s list of 300,000 apps broken down into categories, so we could actually see what a completely pointless con game all of this is.
I owned an iPhone, and currently have an EVO and a Blackberry. As far as I can tell, they are all in the same boat. It always kills me that some of the loudest bragging done by Apple fanboys (directed at blackberry) is that RIM doesn’t have nearly enough apps. However, I can tell you that a whole lot of the apps they do have work exceptionally well. Several of the apps featured on the RIM site have no comparison on either Apple’s or Droid’s sites. I have about as many really useful, productive apps on my Blackberry as I do on my EVO, or as I ever had on my iPhone. I agree with Brad 2, except I think his estimates are too high. I bet that only about 2% of all these apps are really useful.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my EVO. But there is an old word for the general public that buys into all this hype – SUCK-ER! Buy a smart phone for the right reasons, not because of some mindless, braggardly marketing scheme.
So, there may not be as many apps as Apple’s store, but whatever apps I could think of that I’ve WANTED to have on my android work quite well, and I’ve found most of them in our “limited” market. I’ve found various others just by doing a Google search. So, yes, it’s stupid to compare them just by numbers of available apps.
You people are pathetic. When Google opens something up to make it a free for all you all whine how Google needs to exert more control. When Google exerts more control on their source code you whine that then need to free things up.
If Google was as restrictive as Apple on their app store you would whine about that.
Pathentic whiners.
Rather generous to say that half the apps are viable. I’d say 25%. If a) app developers were actually making money on Android, and b) the apps on Android included the truly useful apps (such as Netflix, which allows you to stream movies, unlike the many 3rd party clones), then the comparison of 100,00 apps to 250,000 apps would be moot.
Case point example? My mom has Risk app (Lux) on her iPhone such that she can play risk against both the computer and multiplayer. Android has no such single app, but instead three apps that allow partial performance of EITHER computer play OR multiplayer. All three are mediocre in comparison to Lux, though the best is War with Friends. Why can’t we get Zynga apps (40 million users?), equally-good children’s games, etc? If Android is so great for its “openness,” then certainly someone could make it easy to apply iPhone apps to Android?????? Does Droid?
PS – I am an android user and would never switch to iPhone.