Android Market app count surges 68% in March
updated 04:20 pm EDT, Wed April 7, 2010
Sudden rush of Android apps tracked
The number of Android apps reaching Android Market shot up by 68 percent in March, new data from AndroLib claimed. While the number of titles added to the store had reached a high of 5,532 in February, the app count grew by a much larger 9,320 titles last month. An official estimate for the total Android catalog wasn't given, although Google itself recently put the official mark at 30,000.
What triggered the spike isn't known, although it came about about five months after the Droid and two months after the Nexus One. Both were the earliest phones to run Android 2.0 or later and significantly improved the performance and features for the Android platform. The Droid's runaway sales in the US also created a much larger market for Android apps that wasn't present earlier.
Google's mobile store still trails significantly behind that of Apple, which already has at least 150,000 apps and would have reached Android's current rate months ago. However, it hints at a considerable closing of the gap in development and corroborates findings that many iPhone developers now also write for Android to cover the widest possible audience.
