Although it’s still far from reaching the saturation point, Apple’s AppStore doesn’t grow as fast as it used to. According to the App Genome Project, the number of apps available in the AppStore increased by 44% since August 2010, while Android Market grew at an impressive rate of %127 in the same period. With nearly 350K apps, the Apple AppStore is still leading the way in terms of total number of apps — there are about 90,000 apps in the Android Market.
If each market continues to grow at the same rate, the Android Market will have more apps than the Apple AppStore by mid-2012. Android developers typically release more apps than iOS developers — on average Android Market has 6.2 apps per developer while the AppStore has 4.8 apps per developer.
Other notable findings from App Genome Project include:
- Android Market’s prevalence of paid apps increased from 22% in August 2010 to 34% in February 2011, whereas the proportion of paid apps in the Apple AppStore decreased slightly from 71% to 66%. Android Market price points have increased as well, with the proportion of paid Android apps costing $0.99 or less decreasing from 61% in August 2010 to 37% in February 2011.
- When it comes to in-app ads, the Google AdMob SDK is integrated in most free iOS and Android apps, but iAd is quickly gaining traction in the AppStore.
- More iOS apps access contacts and location than Android apps. 28% of all apps in the Android Market and 34% of all free apps in the Apple AppStore have the capability to access location. On the other hand, 7.5% of Android apps and 11% of iOS apps can access users’ contacts.
- As for the alternative markets, App Genome Project analyzed two alternative markets for Android that target Chinese users, finding that although these serve a legitimate need for localized apps, they also host pirated and repackaged apps — nearly 11% of the apps from the Android Market were found to be repackaged and likely submitted by someone other than original developer. In the case of iOS, alternative markets provide owners of jailbroken devices access to unique or pirated apps — 8% of all paid apps in the AppStore were found pirated on one alternative iOS market.
App Genome Project gathered data from the Android Market, the Apple AppStore and four specific alternative markets, two for Android and two for iOS. You can get additional information from here.