Gotcha! Google Play Catches Up With The App Store As It Reaches 700,000 Apps

(8:25 am PDT, Oct 30th 2012)

Gotcha! Google Play Catches Up With The App Store As It Reaches 700,000 Apps

Google Play is now home to 700,000 Android apps.

Since its debut back in 2008, Apple’s iOS App Store has held the crown for the largest library of mobile apps and games available. That’s no longer the case, however, as its biggest rival, the Google Play store, has now caught up. Today Google announced that it now offers over 700,000 Android titles.

That eliminates one of iOS’s biggest advantages over Android. Apple has always touted the massive selection the App Store provides to iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users over rival mobile markets, but now Android users have the same selection to choose from on their own devices.

What’s more, the makes the situation even harder for the likes of Microsoft, whose Windows Phone Marketplace offers a mere 100,000 apps. BlackBerry App World narrowly beats that with around 105,000 apps at last count.

Apple would argue, however, that its own App Store is the most successful of the four. The Cupertino company announced during its recent iPad mini unveiling that it has now paid over over $6.5 billion to iOS developers over the past four years, while a struggle against piracy prevents Android developers from earning quite as much.

Apple would also argue that it’s also about quality, not just quantity. But that’s a debate that could rage on for hours among Android and iOS fans, so I think I’ll leave it there.

Apps you might like

Comment »

  • http://twitter.com/shanecbryson Shane Bryson

    If we take a look at how many Android apps actually get downloaded and how long they stay on devices and get used, vs the same thing on iOS, iOS by far has the most beneficial app library.

    • Mārtiņš Belte

      You know, that’s an assumption. You cannot prove it without proper statistics.

  • William D

    Perhaps Ive will kickstart new things in iOS to excite developers a bit more.. core integration with Maps, Siri and default apps would be a good start!

  • SamuelBrock

    Its in the quality. Openness has its advantages and disadvantages. Don’t kid yourself Android, you should already be killing Apple in the sheer volume of apps, but unless you turn your utopian open world into a communal dictatorship, you’ll never match Apple on quality.

  • http://www.facebook.com/edwin.torres57 Edwin Torres

    How many of those 700,000 apps can be used on any given android smart phone? That figure, I bet, would be pathetically low, almost as low as Blackberry’s or even Microsoft’s library. Bottom line, if you get an iPhone, you truly get 700,000+ apps. While if you get an android with google play you get much, much less than that.

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1044030140 Sean Liu

      No, not really. All app ecosystems are filled with a majority of crap apps. iOS app store is just much better at surfacing good apps. Google’s weakness is it’s Google Play store. I’ve gone through hundreds of iPhone apps, and a large percentage of them were duds, and I’ve seen a fair share of scam apps.

  • http://www.svapo.it/ Tinny

    What about tablet apps? Still far away

  • http://twitter.com/Sheald Schnell

    A good deal of these are infested with viruses/malware as well, but I guess they still count.

  • http://twitter.com/SvapoFun SvapoFun

    Just remember that monetization is bigger on iOs than Android.

About the author

Killian BellKillian Bell is a freelance writer based in the UK. He has an interest in all things tech and also writes for TechnoBuffalo. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell, or through his website.

email hidden; JavaScript is required| Read more posts by .

Posted in Android, News | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |


scribol