Android News
Android Marketplace reaches 20,000 apps, with no signs of slowing down
December 15, 2009 | by Evan Selleck
Android, Android OS, Uncategorized
With all those rumors swirling around that the Android Market was losing developers, I was beginning to think the Market would whittle away before it ever even got a chance. But according to Androlib, I may have been to hasty in that assumption. As it turns out, the Android Market is growing quite well. In fact, in a short five month span, the selection of apps went from 10,000 to 20,000.
At this point in time, there’s no official way to determine just how many applications are available within the Market (which means, Google doesn’t release that info), but the website Androlib has done a crack-up job since the launch of Android to catalog both paid and free apps disbursed to the Market. And according to them, we’ve just reached the 20,000 mark a few hours ago. That’s a pretty big milestone for the marketplace, and Google’s Operating System as a whole, and it’s just great news in general.
What’s also great, is to see the percentages of paid apps and free apps, and know that free apps are still winning the fight. We’ve got a substantial 37.7% of paid apps in the market, but the bulk 62.3% is still dedicated to the free range of applications. From what we can see here, the Marketplace is growing on a fairly steady rate, with no signs of slowing down any time soon. It looks like 2010 is going to be a great year for both phone manufacturers, as well as software developers. As more and more people get excited about the Android OS, we’ll see an even more expansive growth within our beloved source of application downloading. We can’t wait to see what’s coming next, or to see the Market hit the next milestone: 50,000.
[via MobileCrunch]
I know that some folks will trumpet the size of the iPhone's app store, but there is eventually a point of diminishing returns. For example, I don't think that having 200,000 apps in one store would be a significant advantage when the other store has 150,000 apps. And even at 20,000 apps, it is getting very hard to find something that is offered for the iPhone that isn't available for Android (except when it comes to games).
Will it run WINE, CROSSOVER, GARMIN, TOMTOM, ABIWORD? Most Linux operating systems do.
Connected to another NTFS hard disk, can it read that – like the popular Linux op sys’s?
Greg Zeng, Retired IT Consultant, Australian Capital Territory.