Google celebrates as Android hits 25 billion downloads Over the next five days, the Mountain View Chocolate Factory will offer a series of discounts on products and applications in its Google Play store to celebrate hitting the 25 billion–downloads mark. "Every day you'll be able to choose from a collection of apps from some of the world's top developers including Gameloft, …
My prediction is that once Android app numbers have overtaken Iphone, the media will stop making a noise about this as if it was the Most Important Thing Ever.
Or alternatively, they'll switch to something else - such as including numbers of songs and films, and The Reg has now done.
Application download site numbers are pointless - on non-Iphone platforms, you're not restricted to the one site anyway (does Windows have no software, because there isn't an "app store"?), plus who cares about raw numbers, it doesn't tell you about the quality. Most "apps" seem to be pointless website wrappers, and why does it matter if there are 20 apps to do the same thing, instead of 19? I've also got to laugh that for years Apple users were saying it doesn't matter that Windows had more software - even though the issue there was that Mac OS did lack particular applications, and no one simply went on about raw numbers.
Numbers of songs, films etc is even more pointless. If I want to download a song, I can do it from loads of sites - it doesn't affect my choice of platform. I wouldn't want to download onto my phone via a mobile network anyway - I'd much rather download to my computer, and then have it available for all my devices.
I only recently joined 'the app revolution' getting an Android tablet a few weeks back (wanted a new toy) but I have noticed there's an extraordinary amount of crap apps out there - most you can avoid simply by looking at the pics/detail text/reviews but ultimately you can't help avoiding crap apps 100% of the time and deleting apps seconds after they're downloaded & tested is not uncommon I have discovered.
Exactly the same as the iOS one, then.
Although some of the utter crap iOS Apps are made by Apple (Podcast, Maps...) while I've yet to see a crap Google application.
Apple claim to 'curate' the iOS store, but they don't do any kind of filtering for quality - they may have done so in the past (I recall having to send them a video of the application working) but they don't anymore.
Possibly this changed when they decided to go for quantity, as that's much easier to brag about.
It's really easy to 'write' and publish an Android or iOS application, so of course most of them are rubbish.
One thing I don't like on Android is the large amount of ad-ware. Fair enough if people want to make money, but at least be honest about it - most of these don't mention it (though you can sometimes tell, if an app requires network connection, when there's no reason it should). (And it's not just a dislike of ads - already a problem if you have limited screen size on a mobile device - there's also issues such as wasting battery life.)
This includes really trivial applications like for a torch. Thing is, I'd happily write a free and ad-free app myself to do the job. But the sad thing is, no one would know about it - the already established apps would be at the top of the search results, and since they don't admit to having ads, no one would be aware of the advantage of my ad-free version.
It doesn't help that there's very limited search tools - only a choice of "paid" or "free". Thankfully with Android you're not limited to Google's site - so sites like F Droid are useful, for open source Android software.
Android may have more applications than Symbian which I used previously, though in practice it was easier finding something ad-free for Symbian. My point isn't to criticise Android - it's just another example of how raw application numbers is not a useful metric.
How much have Android punters saved by not having to pay £1.99 for an app that doesn't deserve to be anything but free?
Sorry you are butt-hurt because your rubbish app on iOS gets money, but on Android someone has done one for free. If you app was upto scratch, people would pay....
Android is a buyers market, iOS is a developers market.
The some people being those "getting away" with selling apps on iOS that don't deserve to be anything but free, and Android punters giving them the finger and downloading the free alternative....
Those are the ONLY butt-hurt boys, and for them I have no sympathy. As I said, Android is a buyers market, if you make something decent, people will buy, I have bought 12 apps/games this week alone (granted it's not a typical week, it's a 25p sale week), but people do buy WORTHWHILE stuff all the time, it's just the vocal ones are the developers peddling crap.
Circa 350m iDevices in circulation, 25 billion downloads = average 70 downloads per phone. Similar numbers for the Android camp (avergae 50 or so downloads per device).
I don't believe the average user has downloaded 70 or even 50 apps, so I'm guessing that both parties are referring to apps and content. Content generally is paid, apps, well, not very often.
Fourteen apps at $0.25NZD today, including Office Suite Pro, so not only did I grab it for my Nexus 7, but even bought it for my wife. If I tell her tghat I bought here an Office Suite for her Nexus 7, my generosity should earn brownie points. No need for her to know how close to free it was. :)
Who cares? Also note that the article says "top apps", which tells us little about how things are for the average developer.
As a user, a platform is better if there's more stuff available for free. That's a good thing about Windows, tonnes of free software - much better than 15 years ago when even simple stuff was crippled shareware. It's what happens when a market matures and becomes mainstream - more software available for free.
And as a developer, why limit yourself to just those two? Stats also show Nokia Store doing better than Google Play, or in some cases better than Apple too. Indeed my own experience is that I get a staggering *one hundred times* as many downloads on Nokia Store than on Google Play. In fact, I even get more downloads for Windows on my website than for Google Play. I think it's a combination of there being still a massive userbase (Symbian number one platform until 2011, and still outselling Apple after that), but less competition in terms of numbers of applications.
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