Android Market Hits 10 Billion Downloads, Games Dominate

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Android Market Hits 10 Billion Downloads, Games Dominate

Posted by Soulskill on Friday December 9, 2011 @02:34AM from the bored-begets-big-numbers dept.

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.

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Paid Vs. Free? by stating_the_obvious · 2011-12-09 02:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

How about a breakout of paid versus free and some idea of who's making money developing for the Andriod platform?
1. Re:Paid Vs. Free? by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · 2011-12-09 02:40 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Google. Period.
2. Re:Paid Vs. Free? by InsightIn140Bytes · 2011-12-09 02:43 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Android apps and games are mostly free, and ad-supported. Mobile developers quickly learned that piracy on Android is much larger problem than on iPhone and that they couldn't just sell their software. That was the reason they started offering games for free and getting the revenue from advertisements. It goes well along the lines with Google too, who also recently bought the largest mobile advertising house AdMob.
  
  This also means that people of course download way more apps too.
3. Re:Paid Vs. Free? by salesgeek · 2011-12-09 02:47 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Um... you were doing great until you hit the piracy part. That isn't why apps are less expensive on Android. The issue is that Android's market (small m market) are competitive because there are multiple ways consumers can buy (Google, Amazon, etc)
  
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  -- $G
4. Re:Paid Vs. Free? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-09 02:49 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Mobile developers quickly learned that piracy on Android is much larger problem than on iPhone and that they couldn't just sell their software.
  This certainly isn't true for me. I used to pirate all kinds of apps for Windows Mobile and for PC, but with Android it's easier to pay 99 cents for an app and get perpetual updates than to bother trying to pirate an app and keep it updated. Kind of like STEAM. I've bought a lot of apps already and I plan to buy almost all of the apps that are going on sale for 10 cents this week.
5. Re:Paid Vs. Free? by ByOhTek · 2011-12-09 03:18 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Umm. My android tablet cost more than the iPad with the same amount of disk. It was not 'a cheap Android'. I got it because it had features few others had.
  Mind you, at the time I thought the iPads were still more expensive, but even had I known I could have gotten an iPad for $50 less, I'd still stick with the Android I have for the features it has, that the iPad lacks.
  
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  Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
6. Re:Paid Vs. Free? by gl4ss · 2011-12-09 03:26 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  why would you pay for something that you know is available for free and took some guy couple of weeks of spare time to create? a _LOT_ of apps fall into this category. for example the "enable/disable wifi-hotspot"-widget that i'm using. it's such a basic thing, really, it should come with the os itself. even if you made a paid version of it, how are you going to differentiate to justify anyone paying for it?
  you should rephrase it that piracy is easier on android since you don't have to pay the os provider to enable sideloading, as is with other some other platforms(ios, wp7, bb..).
  "cheaper" implies there's something more expensive out there though. wp7's are in the same price brackets, you don't really pay much for the os there either. apple sells iphones that are not of the latest generation too if you want "cheap" and high end androids cost about the same as the most fresh iphone at any given day anyhow(about 750-800 bucks).
  and a lot of the cool stuff that's worth warezing is based on stolen gpl code anyways!
  
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  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
7. Re:Paid Vs. Free? by EvilBudMan · 2011-12-09 04:37 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Nobody mentions Amazon's AppStore? If you can sideload it works just like Google's Market except they have more stuff that you can pay for to get rid of the adds so a developer is not tied down completely to the Android Market.
8. Re:Paid Vs. Free? by Alter_3d · 2011-12-09 04:55 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Nobody mentions Amazon's AppStore? If you can sideload it works just like Google's Market except they have more stuff that you can pay for to get rid of the adds so a developer is not tied down completely to the Android Market.
  Only useful for US Residents. The Amazon Appstore doesnt work outside the States.
10 cent downloads for 10 days by Rik+Sweeney · 2011-12-09 02:42 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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Re:iPhone vs Android by Toe,+The · 2011-12-09 02:53 · Score: 4, Interesting

At some point, app count becomes irrelevant.
First, most good apps are on both platforms, right? But more importantly, how many thousand apps can you run on your phone? And specifically, how many thousand barcode readers do you need, for example? Quantity of apps seems quite irrelevant, especially when there is so much redundancy.
From my experience, the distinction between the iPhone and Android is about interface. Maybe it is just because I am more used to the iPhone, but when using an Android, I find the experience to be downright hostile. It is as if I have to fight the interface to get it to do what I want.
With the iPhone, I feel like it is working with me. There is no doubt that sometimes the iPhone tries to be "too smart" and do stuff for me that I'd rather it not do. But on the balance, I find everything about its interface to be smoother, more elegant, and a much more pleasant/productive experience.
Given that both systems have basically the same feature set and basically the same apps, interface and industrial design are the major distinguishing factors.
Price seems like a rather minor factor. At least in the US, price of the phone is nothing compared to the price of the service.
Re:Pretty old news for being Slashdot by VortexCortex · 2011-12-09 03:06 · Score: 3, Funny

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.
Re:Knew it by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-09 03:08 · Score: 3, Informative

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.
Re:10 Billion would be 100 Billion... by VortexCortex · 2011-12-09 03:13 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.
Re:iPhone vs Android by CaptainOblivion · 2011-12-09 04:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

My experience with interface is the reverse; I struggle to get iOS to do what I want, while Android makes perfect sense to me and operates smooth as a whistle (smoother, since whistles have little holes in them to make the sounds). This leads me to believe that as far as the interface of the two goes, it really is just personal preference and what you're used to, rather than a clear-cut "one is definitively better than the other" situation.
Re:Android Mkt Hits 10 Billion DLs, Spyware Domina by wzinc · 2011-12-09 04:23 · Score: 3, Funny

No no, the spyware is already on the phones; you don't have to get it from the store.
Re:10 Billion would be 100 Billion... by tepples · 2011-12-09 04:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.
Re:iPhone vs Android by stewbacca · 2011-12-09 04:43 · Score: 3, Interesting

Why do you need (for instance) a Google Maps app when all you should have to do is surf to Google?
I find most embedded apps to be better than their web counterpart on any smartphone/tablet device.