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Android Market Hits 10 Billion Downloads, Games Dominate
New submitter sandeepabhat tips news that Android Market recently saw its 10 billionth app download, reaching the milestone less than a year after the App Store accomplished the same feat. New downloads through Android Market are proceeding at a rate of roughly 1 billion per month. Google has now created an infographic to break down the information further. Games outpace any other type of app, accounting for more than a quarter of all downloads. The top five countries in downloads-per-capita are South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the U.S., and Singapore.
How about a breakout of paid versus free and some idea of who's making money developing for the Andriod platform?
Just in case anyone hasn't noticed, Google are celebrating by making selected apps are available for 10 cents for the next few days (it started a few days ago so there's something like 7 days to go).
The selection changes each day so it's worth having a look. I picked up Toki Tori today.
Summation 2
The other day in another thread someone touted the "obvious" superiority of iPhone over Android. I called him on it, asking what would make the iPhone wrth its higher asking price. The only answer he could come up with was "app availability." (note, I was in a Sprint store yesterday triying to get my phone fixes, and it appeared some Androids cost more than iPhones, but that may have been part of the cantract, with the iPhone subsidized)
It looks like he was trolling. But I am curious, guys, wht with this thread and all, which one has more apps? More important, which one has more apps that are actually useful? If iPhone has 2 million apps and Android has 1.5 million apps, but 1.5 million iPhone apps are all Angry Birds clones, the "iPhone has more apps" would be a red herring; they're not all useful.
Note that these numbers aren't real, they're only illustrations. I'd really like to know which platform is better, iPhone or Android? How well are each built (and I realize that Android's quality is probably all over the board, since there are many different manufacturers).
And does the difference between phone company crippling make the question of Apple vs Android moot?
Free Martian Whores!
I like this metric better than the old "number of apps" metric. I'm sure all the wallpapers, quizes, and sound boards don't add up to many downloads.
Just because people buy more games doesn't mean that they spend more time playing games. I may want a trivia game and a sports game and a card game but I only need one camera program to take a photo. That doesn't mean that I spend more time playing games than taking photos. Personally I think the photo, web and multimedia capabilities are the real killer app for smart phones, not games. I use the camera all the time for work just to record details or show damage of a product to a client. It's insanely fast and easy to just click share and have those photos ready in a web album on picasa. I also listen to podcasts, streaming music and talk radio all day from my phone. I think you'll also find that even for those people who spend a lot of time gaming on their phones they probably buy a lot more games than they actually play. With so many free and discount offers on Android markets it's really easy to fall into a habit of collecting all these games even if you don't often play them. I know I do this even though I hardly ever game on my phone.
Pretty old news for being Slahdot
Heh, you must be new here...
Slashdot used to be quicker than this.
Oh, never mind, you must be really old here.
Breakdown of my iPhone usage (I was a holdout until 18 months ago):
25% Googling for things I'm wondering about when chatting with friends / to resolve a disagreement / to make sure I'm not telling my daughter untruths
25% Facebook/Sickipedia when I've got 5 minutes to kill; general surfing
15% Calculator/Wolfram Alpha when reading, accounting, doing bills, etc.
15% Dilbert, xkcd, news with the morning smoke
10% Texting, emails
5% Taking photos/vidoes when out and about
4% Miscellanous (Shazam, DSL diagnostics, route calculation, local "what's on")
1% Games
My computer is now exclusively for doing long emails and coding, and possibly a bit of Amazon or reading a long online piece. My games console is for gaming. My "phone" is for everything else, because I always have it with me and it can "always" connect to the internet.
Get one. You won't miss your flip phone.
I used to say that. Then I got a smartphone.
They're extremely useful in all kinds of situations; for example, I needed to buy an odd-sized battery recently, and couldn't find anything that matched the markings at the store. Pulled out the phone, Googled it quick, found out exactly what the lettering and numbering means, and could choose a battery. I don't game on mine, other than cards occasionally. And it functions better as a phone than any dumbphone I've had.
Back when the first iPhones came out, I really didn't like the idea of an all-touchscreen phone, and while the phone was impressive, in many ways I didn't think it was good enough at anything to make it worth it. I ended up getting an original Droid, the slide-out keyboard helped ease me into smartphone land, and I've never looked back.
In short - spend some time seriously using one, and your view might change.
I vote based on politicians' actions, unless contrary to my preconceptions. Often wrong, never uncertain. #iamthe99%
Perhaps it would be easier to keep all the phones up to date if the Microsoft Patent Licensing deal didn't involve renegotiation for each new Android version that you want to install on the phone...
Oh hey, guess what? MS charges LESS for a full install of WP7 than their bogus Android license fees. This is the same sort of behavior that got them in anti-competitive trouble LAST TIME. Funny how immediately after their DOJ anti-trust oversight expires, the ramp up the anti-competitive practices.
I hope B & N tears them a new one.
what fragmentation?
just make your app for 2.2 - test that it works with high dpi tablets, maybe make a different layout for them if you feel like it. and bam, you're there. less fragmentation than on ios by now. if your app is targeted at doing some device specific shenigans by running things in the linux-side, I guess there's more fragmentation. for most kind of apps there's not really that much fragmentation to talk about, unless you count varying resolution as fragmentation.
(granted, you can make things speedier with less coding if you do 3.1-> only but that can wait for a year or two in your plans)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
People ask me why I don't have a smart phone. Its because the majority of people just use them to play games or pass the time. Its more toy than a useful appliance. I make an occasional call or text with my old flip phone. Maybe a camera would be nice on occasion but I can count that number of times on one hand.
One comedian whose name escapes me had a great comment about the way people observe things now. They don't see things for themselves. They see things through the miniature screen on the phone instead of their own eyes.
Will I upgrade to a smart phone? Maybe eventually, but I'd rather have $200 in my pocket than a game system with poor phone capabilities.
Believe me I was the same way, up until a couple years ago all I used for a disposable phone that I loaded with prepay cards. Then I upgraded to a more expensive "semi-smart" phone that had a camera, web browser and google maps. It could only run java based apps so it was very limited in "apps". It was still extremely useful when my girlfriend and I went on vacation. It replaced our normal gps for navigation, It replaced my digital camera and took equally good photos. The web browser was useful for finding cheaper gas on gasbuddy,com and I could check my webmail.
I have an android phone now which has the same high usefulness and yes I loaded it with more games even though I hardly spend time on them. The only thing I would warn about is the 2 year contract, go over it very carefully, they can get you with an expensive plan and useless extra fees.
So I would say before going all out with an Android or iPhone try one of the $50-$75 prepaid phones that has a camera, web browser and maps application and see how much use you get out of it.
No no, the spyware is already on the phones; you don't have to get it from the store.
Some apps are system sellers. To take an example from another market, if you want Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it doesn't matter how many games the Xbox 360, PLAYSTATION 3, and PC can run; you need a Wii. I don't own an iPhone and am therefore not familiar with the apps considered system sellers on that platform, but I imagine that they exist.
I don't think the platform killer-game analogy works with iOS versus Android. Nearly everything is developed for both platforms, and in the rare case that one is not available on the other, there are hundreds of alternatives.
Major video game developers have in fact complained about PC fragmentation. A retail game is expected to run acceptably on an Intel GMA yet take advantage of the latest and greatest AMD or NVIDIA card.
Nearly everything is developed for both platforms
That certainly wasn't the case last year: http://mashable.com/2010/07/02/ios-android-developer-stats/
Fandroids hate facts.