Apple’s App Store is still the leader in terms of number of applications available with around 350,000 apps and Google’s Android marketplace is second with around 200,000 apps. But Android apps just won the race for the most free applications with an estimated 134,342 free applications versus 121,845 for Apple’s App Store.
If the apps growth rate remains the same, we can safely say that the Android Marketplace will become the largest store in just 5 months from now, with Apple’s App Store in second place.
But Apple is looking more into quality and not quantity. Apple just announced that it will be banning incentivized apps from its App Store. Incentivized apps are apps that ask users to download another app in order to enable more features in their current apps, thus falsing apps charts rankings in the App Store. This practice is dubbed illegal by Apple and Apple will start to ban all apps that practice this method.
Perhaps, Google should also focus a bit more on the quality of the apps produced too; to be an open platform is good, but to have quality apps is even better. Just my two cents as an Android fan.
Related links
– The Battle For The Most Content And The Emerging Tablet Market
