back to article Android Market shows hand at 100k Apps

One hundred thousand apps are to be had on Android Market, Google declared today. "One hundred thousand apps in Android Market" it wrote on AndroidDev, the official Twitter feed aimed at...Android developers. Google has taken 20 months to reach this landmark while, Apple needed sixteen - and last week Apple revealed the App …

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  1. TIMMEH

    How many *useful* apps?

    The number of apps available is pretty meaningless considering the huge amount of trash on the Android Market (as I'm sure is the case on the other platforms). Do people really base their decision on how many apps are available, or the presence of good quality apps and/or recognisable brand names on a given platform?

  2. Matthew Anderson

    100k apps

    100 useful ones only!

    Seriously, the app market is a great feature but if they do not revamp it then we are just being swamped by all the trash apps out there. It is beyond frustrating looking through the android marketplace for decent apps, yes you can find them but sheesh, you would think Google could design some decent search and sort features as they are supposedly experts on this kind of thing.

    In its current form I hate it. Gingerbread update might come with some new and improved marketplace features but I doubt it.

    1. John Miles

      AppBrain

      If you haven't already - Try http://www.appbrain.com to search for things

  3. Andy Blackburn
    FAIL

    It's a shame...

    That since moving out of the UK, my 'droid won't show any paid-for or featured apps. I can search for free apps, but due to Google's policies, none of the others show unless I put my old UK sim back in the phone.

    Annoying!

    1. pan2008

      you need WP7 or iphone

      My windows phone 7 shows me all my current applications plus auto updates for any applications that I bought. I am sure iphone must do something similar. Thay's the failure of android. They need to take care of this, else it fails.

      1. Mitch Kent

        *sigh*

        "I am sure iphone must do something similar."

        You can't berate the Android system for not doing something under the *assumption* that the iPhone one does.v Especially when the Android system *does* do this anyway...

      2. Rob
        Stop

        Don't forget...

        ... in a lot of respects your Windows Phone 7 in is catch-up mode for a lot of these smartphone features. Also bizarrely enough WP7 has thrown away a few features that actually put it ahead of some of these smartphones, 1 step forward and 2 steps back, tis a bizarre product development methodology they have at Microsoft to say the least.

        (and for those reasons I'm gonna kiss WM goodbye in favour of Android in a couple of months)

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    many apps does a girl need?

    Enough to cover her modesty.

  5. Jimmy Floyd
    Jobs Halo

    Android is not as easy to buy as iPhone

    I set up an iPhone for a friend t'other day and was slightly irritated to discover that one must enter a credit card number before they let you in to play. On Android the credit card only comes out when you buy an app.

    Then again, there have been more than a couple of times where I might have bought an app from Android if it had been quick and simple, but by the time the plastic comes out the 'impulse' has gone and I restrain myself.

    From a developer's perspective, that's a point to Apple (and that's not something I often say!).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No card store account

      > slightly irritated to discover that one must enter a credit card number before they let you in to play [in the iTunes app store]

      So was I - handing in the credit card at the store entrance seems wrong. So I searched and hit this, straight from the horse's mouth: Create an iTunes App Store account without a credit card, http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2534

      (Basically: create the account while "buying" a free app, there's a no-card option then.)

  6. patrick_bateman

    300K apps

    I said ths to someone the other day and they couldnt answer me. Sell me this oh so great phone without mentioning apps......

    wow the iphony has 275K off apps that just replicate what the others do and if your thick enough to need an app that reminds you of your period or car park reminder is i guess there is just no hope for some people. Android actually have apps that you can use daily and not for thick'os - and at the end fo the day if you cant find a app you can just make one yourself.

    1. TIMMEH

      Hate to get in the way of a good iPhone bashing but...

      The Android and iPhone app stores are both full of apps for 'thickos', in fact some people even develop them for both platforms!

      But I'm sure you knew that.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    navigation

    Both app stores are hard to navigate and search, you hardly get beyond the first 100 or so apps or to anything thats not already a hit or staff favourite in the apple app store.

  8. deshepherd

    100k apps

    Remember back in BBC micro days buying an adventure game that boasted that it was the biggest game of its type with "over 9000 rooms" .... turned out it was set on a space shiip which had 10 storage segments, each segment had 10 floors, each floor had 10 sectors and each sector contained 9 rooms - and each set of 9 rooms was identical to every other apart from, I think, 2 - the one you woke up in (think its was transporting cryogenically frozen people) and another you eventually followed clues to which had another dying person who gave another clue before expiring - then there were a few dozen other rooms at the control end of the ship where all the real action happened. So ... it had over 9000 rooms, though 8982 of them were utterly irrelevant

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      That would be

      SnoBall 9 - one of the many great adventures from Level 9.

      Yeah it was a bit annoying that all the rooms were the same, but it made up for it with great humour. If you examined the gown you wear at the start it says: "a light gown that ties up at the back. It fits you like a second skin - possibly a hippos"

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Memetastic

      I think you'll find, good Sirs, that "Over 9000" is still the only useful way to measure anything on the interwebz

  9. Captain Save-a-ho
    Coat

    At least Android market

    is guaranteed not to have 200000 fart apps.

    1. GrantB
      FAIL

      Why?

      Why do you think the Android market guaranteed not to have 200000 fart apps?

      I thought it was an Android feature that you could have all these without Google bans?

      The odd thing about Android apps that I have seen, is that in theory the should be much more free to release anything without Apple checking everything, but I can't say I have seen any Android apps that are not already on the iPhone. I assume there are (tethering apps, wifi finders)? but not exactly he wild west market with Hentai & what ever else I thought it would be

  10. plrndl

    Platform Choice

    While most developers will have a preferred platform, surely most will port a successful app to as many platforms as possible.

  11. Ian Stephenson
    Jobs Horns

    So that's...

    60% fart apps and 30% bejewelled clones.

    What are the other 10%?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Wallpaper, themes and ringtones

      Yes, wallpapers are counted as apps...

  12. M Gale

    "..but without a standard platform for development.."

    What do you mean by this?

    As in, the usual IDE is eclipse, but you can use anything?

    As in, the usual language is Java, but you can Appcelerate about any language you like?

    As in, multiple different types and capabilities of phones? (In which case, is the PC not a standard platform?)

    Or as in Android itself, which.. err.. either passes Google's compatibility testing or doesn't carry the Market app and can't be called Android?

  13. Slackness
    Thumb Down

    Flashback

    kind of reminds you of the extra value that 'puter mags punted on a CD stuck to the cover of MAX-PC-God weekly in the 90's.

  14. Ammaross Danan
    Coat

    How to buy a phone

    1) How easy is it to make PHONE CALLS?

    2) How neat and easy is the contact list for PHONE CALLS?

    3) How quick and pleasant is it to surf the web?

    4) I need an app for X, Y, and Z. Are they available, and for how much (preferrably free)?

    5) How much space can I cram into it for doing non-phone things (i.e.: watching a movie while on on the tube).

    Others might include a 6) Friend awe factor, and might even classify it as #1, but I'm sensical and plan on using any poundage/pocket space on my person for actual useful objects.

  15. Zobbo

    Apps are filtered by OS version

    How many apps will someone like me, stuck on Android 1.6 see, though? Yes, I saw an opportunity to whinge about being stuck on Android 1.6 and I took it.

    Seriously though, I can't see PDF viewer or Angry Birds and god knows what else. So, do the lucky Froyo users see those 100k apps? What about the proles like me? Do Iphone3 users see iPhone4 apps?

  16. Mitch Kent

    People also seem to forget that Android openness

    ...doesn't just get you a more open app market, but gets you, if you like, more than one app market.

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