The amount of quality apps in the Google Play Store has increased exponentially over the last year or so. It used to be that iOS users would often see an app months, or even years, before Android users. Much like with Instagram and Temple Run, the developers would use iOS to market their app and make it popular, then develop an Android app. This way, there would be buzz for the Android app when it launched, because for some reason, companies use to not think that Android users could promote an app. Nowadays, however, many Android apps are launching simultaneously – or close to it – with their iOS counterparts. For example, the Android version of Temple Run 2 launched just a week after the iOS version, whereas the original Temple Run launched months after iOS on Android. As we all know, the more quality apps that are available, the more apps we download. Recently, both Google and Apple have been touting download milestones. The iOS App Store just hit 50 billion downloads all time, while the Play Store recently cracked 48 billion, according to Google. According to a new report, though, Apple will not hold a lead for much longer.
According to The Telegraph, Android will beat out iOS for total app downloads as soon as October. The report claims that the iOS App Store is seeing about 2 billion downloads each month. The App Store has 850,000 apps available to users. Android, on the other hand, is seeing about 2.5 billion app downloads every month.
Google is currently activating about 2 million Android devices a day, which comes out to about a total of 900 million devices in the wild. Horace Dediu, an analyst for Asymco, claims “the total downloads/install base are currently 83 apps per iOS device sold and 53 apps per Android device activation,” this means that “the sheer weight of Android units will generate more downloads, but on a per-device basis, the iOS devices do seem to consume more apps.”
It’s becoming quite apparent that the biggest argument used by iOS fanboys against Android is becoming irrelevant. Thanks to hot-selling flagships like the HTC One and Galaxy S4, the gap of app downloads is narrowing, but more importantly, this means that the quality of apps in the Play Store is improving.